OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Jihadists attacked a town in northern Burkina Faso and killed 35 civilians, most of them women, and the ensuing clashes with security forces left 80 jihadists dead, the West African nation’s president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, announced late Tuesday.

The violence, which erupted in the town of Arbinda in the Sahel region near the country’s border with Mali, lasted for several hours, according to a military statement. Seven members of the security forces who responded were also killed.

A number of Islamic extremist groups are known to operate in Burkina Faso, and jihadist attacks are frequent in the area.

For years Burkina Faso was spared the kind of Islamic extremism long seen across the border in Mali, where it took a 2013 French-led military intervention to dislodge jihadists from power in several major towns.