APA – Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) The President of the Transition has repeated his appeal to members of jihadist groups to lay down their arms and give peace a chance.
Captain Ibrahim Traoré on Sunday denounced the “sudden awakening” of “several (terrorist) sleeper cells that should keep this war going for decades and decades.”
The head of state cited as evidence “the intensity of the fight” in recent days.
According to the Burkina news agency (AIB), on November 26, a large number of jihadists attacked the military detachment in the town of Djibo, in the Sahelian province of Soum.
A few days later, Captain Traoré admitted that the Djibo incident was “an unprecedented attack on a massive scale.”
He warned that ”terrorism was here to stay in Burkina”.
“We decided, in good conscience, to take over the destiny of this country and to wage war. Because the war could last forever if we don’t fight it,” the caretaker president added.
For nearly a decade, Burkina Faso has faced a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced several million. This insecurity was behind two coups in 2022.
SD/ac/lb/APA