Soldiers from Burkina Faso patrol on the road of Gorgadji in the Sahel area of Burkina Faso, on March 3, 2019.

Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for an attack on a military outpost in Burkina Faso on Tuesday near the town of Arbinda, in the Northern Soum province.

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Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) issued a statement saying one of its members drove into the base in Northern Soum province and set off a bomb in the car that exploded, leaving seven soldiers dead and many injured.

The terrorist group, which is a breakaway faction of the Nigerian jihadist groupe Boko Haram, did not claim responsibility however for a simultaneous assault Tuesday on the nearby city of Arbinda. The latter attack left 35 civilians dead, including 31 women, according to President Roch Marc Christian Kabore.

“We don’t know why they didn’t claim the death of civilians for the time being” FRANCE 24’s jihadism specialist Wassim Nasr says. “But it has already occurred that they don’t claim something or that they claim it later. They might even try to keep the authorities questioning if it was them or the Al Qaeda group, which is still the most powerful terrorist group in this area”, he added.

#BurkinaFaso l’#EI sous « province Afrique de l’Ouest » revendique l’attaque d’#Arbinda #Soum mardi dernier « un kamikaze a ouvert la voie avec son véhicule piégé » pic.twitter.com/uHP6U9ZV7w — Wassim Nasr (@SimNasr) December 27, 2019

One of the deadliest assaults in Burkina Faso

The overall death toll of 42 victims makes the simultaneous Arbinda attacks one of the deadliest assaults in nearly five years of jihadist violence in the west African country. President Roch Marc Kabore has declared two days of national mourning in response to Tuesday's deadly attack on civilians.

En mémoire des victimes civiles et militaires de l'attaque terroriste de ce mardi à Arbinda, j'ai décidé de décréter un deuil national de 48 heures sur toute l'étendue du territoire national à compter du mercredi 25 décembre à zéro (00) heure. — Roch KABORE (@rochkaborepf) December 24, 2019

The Tuesday morning raid was carried out by more than 200 jihadists on motorbikes and lasted several hours before they drove the militants back, a security source said. After several hours, armed forces in Soum backed by the air force repelled the militants and seized a large number of weapons and motorbikes, the army said in a statement.

"A large group of terrorists simultaneously attacked the military base and the civilian population in Arbinda," the army chief of staff said in a statement.

“As they fled, in a cowardly way, the terrorists killed 35 civilians of whom 31 were women,” the government said in separate statement. It said 80 militants and seven members of the security forces were killed in in this double attack, with 20 soldiers being injured, Communications minister and government spokesman Remis Dandjinou said.

A couple of hours after the Arbinda attack, "around a dozen" Burkina Faso soldiers were killed when a military patrol was ambushed overnight in Hallele in the country's volatile Soum province, a security source told AFP on Wednesday.

The Arbinda incident followed an attack on a mining convoy in November which killed nearly 40 people – victims of an Islamist insurgency that has ignited ethnic tensions and rendered large parts of the country ungovernable this year.

Pope's prayers

There was worldwide condemnation of the attack, as well as expressions of support for Burkina Faso.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the Christmas Eve attack and offered his "deep condolences" to the families of the victims, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement. "The Secretary-General conveys the solidarity of the United Nations to the government and people of Burkina Faso," he added, emphasising the UN's continued support for the Sahel region in their efforts to fight terrorism and violent extremism.

In his traditional Christmas message, Pope Francis denounced attacks on Christians in Africa and prayed for victims of conflict, natural disasters and disease on the world's poorest continent.

The pontiff urged "comfort to those who are persecuted for their religious faith, especially missionaries and members of the faithful who have been kidnapped, and to the victims of attacks by extremist groups, particularly in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria".

560,000 internally displaced

Leaders of the G5 Sahel nations held summit talks in Niger earlier this month, calling for closer cooperation and international support in the battle against the Islamist threat.

Militant violence has spread across the vast Sahel region, especially in Burkina Faso and Niger, having started when armed Islamists revolted in northern Mali in 2012.

The Sahel region of Africa lies to the south of the Sahara Desert and stretches across the breadth of the African continent. There are 4,500 French troops deployed in the region as well as a 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali to fight insurgents.

The G5 group is made up of Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, whose impoverished armies have the support of French forces as well as the UN in Mali.

In Burkina Faso, more than 700 people have been killed and around 560,000 internally displaced, according to the United Nations.

Attacks have targeted mostly the north and east of the country, though the capital Ouagadougou has been hit three times.

French troops and Malian soldiers root out terrorists in the country's north 02:20

Prior to Tuesday's attack, Burkina security forces said they had killed around a hundred jihadists in several operations since November.

An ambush on a convoy transporting employees of a Canadian mining company in November killed 37 people.

Attacks have intensified this year as the under-equipped, poorly trained Burkina Faso army struggles to contain the Islamist militancy.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)

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