Burkina Faso’s security forces managed on Friday to free 66 women and children abducted by armed jihadist groups in the northern town of Arbinda, in the Sahel region of the country, according to the national broadcaster.
The broadcaster said that the rescue operation resulted in freeing 27 adult women and 39 children, including babies and young girls.
“They have been freed after eight long days in the hands of their kidnappers,” the broadcaster said.
The mass kidnapping took place on the 12 and 13 January. The women were reportedly abducted with their children while they were scouring a bush near the town of Arbinda in search of wild fruit, leaves and seeds to feed their families amid an ongoing shortage of food in the town, which is under blockade by jihadist groups linked to Daesh* and al-Qaeda*.
Earlier in the week, it was reported that a few abducted women managed to escape to their homes through the undergrowth.
The escapees said that the jihadists divided the captured women into groups and forced them to guide stolen sheep to disguise their activities.
On Tuesday, Burkina Faso's interim President Captain Ibrahim Traore said that terrorists are switching tactics to focus on civilians, noting that their attacks throughout the country have increased since October 2022.
Terrorism in the country has been spreading rapidly since 2015, in the wake of the defenestration of Blaise Compaore, who had ruled the country for 27 years from 1987 to 2014. Furthermore, the West African country is in the highly destabilized African Sahel region, known to be a hotbed for terrorist activity and banditry.
Over the past year, Burkina Faso has witnessed a number of political crises reportedly caused by the government’s failure to tackle, among other things, the ongoing insecurity in the country, with two governments overthrown over the course of nine months.
President Traore, a military captain who was sworn in as head of Burkina Faso’s transitional government in September after a coup against Lt Col Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba - who himself came to power in a coup in January - promised to take back territory occupied by the “terrorist hordes".