A bomb hidden in a corpse dressed in military uniform killed an army doctor and wounded two police officers in northern Burkina Faso, a security official told AFP on Thursday.
Soldiers and police were sent to inspect the male body after it was discovered abandoned on a road in the town of Djibo near the border with Mali, according to the source.
The doctor “died in the explosion of a booby-trapped dead body containing an improvised explosive device,” he said.
“The bomb was detonated by an attempt to turn the body over, directly killing the army doctor and wounding two other team members” on Tuesday, the official added.
A medical source in Djibo told AFP the two wounded police officers were receiving treatment at a local clinic, with one in a critical condition.
One of the poorest countries in the world, Burkina Faso lies in the heart of the sprawling, impoverished Sahel, on the southern rim of the Sahara.
The country been battling an escalating wave of attacks over the last three years, beginning in the North region near the border with Mali. Attacks have spread to the East region, near the border with Togo, Benin and Niger, and to a lesser and to a lesser extent, the west of the country.
Most attacks are attributed to the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (JNIM), which has sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or the jihadist group Ansar ul-Islam, which emerged near the Mali border in December 2016.
Last week saw three attacks, one of which killed five members of the security forces on the same day the president hosted a regional G5 Sahel summit on the fight against terrorism.
The attacks have prompted President Roch Marc Christian Kabore to overhaul the army command, replacing the army chief of staff and heads of the military’s three regional commands.
With reporting from AFP
