Some 50 women were abducted on Thursday and Friday by suspected jihadists in Arbinda, northern Burkina Faso, local officials and residents of this town regularly hit by violence told AFP on Sunday.
According to the testimony of several residents and local officials who wish to remain anonymous, a first group of about forty women was kidnapped about ten kilometers southeast of Arbinda and another of about twenty the next day north of this municipality.
Some women managed to escape
Some were able to escape and return to their towns to testify, around fifty did not return.
“The women have come together to go to collect leaves and wild fruits in the mountains because there is nothing left to eat,” explained one of the inhabitants, adding that they had left with their carts during the day on Thursday.
“On Thursday night, not seeing them come back, we thought their cars had a problem, but three survivors came back to tell us what happened,” added another resident.
According to him, the next day, eight kilometers north of Arbinda, about twenty women who were not informed of the first kidnapping, were in turn victims of a kidnapping.
“In both groups, the women managed to escape the surveillance of the terrorists and returned to the village on foot,” he explained. “We believe that the kidnappers took them to their various bases,” she continued.
According to local officials who confirmed the abductions, the army and its civilian auxiliaries searched the area without success.
An area blocked by jihadist groups
The Arbinda commune is located in the Sahel region, north of Burkina Faso, an area blocked by jihadist groups and with little food supply.
These supplies are crucial: in many parts of the country, agricultural food production is non-existent because fields are not accessible due to insecurity.
Last November, the spokesperson for a group of civil society organizations in the region, Idrissa Badini, expressed alarm at the situation in Arbinda.
“The population that has exhausted its reserves is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe,” he explained.
Thousands dead and 2 million displaced
Nearly a million people currently live in blockaded areas, in the north or east of the country, according to the United Nations.
Arbinda and its surroundings are a regular scene of deadly jihadist attacks against civilians in particular. Two of them were particularly bloody: in August 2021, 80 people (including 65 civilians) were killed in an attack on the convoy taking them to Arbinda and in December 2019, 42 people (including 35 civilians) were killed in an attack on the town. .
Burkina Faso, particularly in its northern half, has been facing increasing attacks since 2015 from jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. They left thousands dead and at least two million displaced.
Captain Ibrahim Traoré, transitional president resulting from the military coup on September 30 – the second in eight months – has set himself the objective of “reconquering the territory occupied by these hordes of terrorists”.
Source: BFM TV
