A security post near Ivory Coast’s northern border with jihadist-torn Burkina Faso was attacked overnight, a security official said, and a resident said two people were killed.
The attack occurred at around 1.00 am at Kafolo, the official said, adding that further details were unclear.
“The assailants were pushed back and a military operation is under way,” army headquarters told AFP, without further details.
Fourteen soldiers were killed in an attack on the army in Kafolo last year June.
No group claimed responsibility for that raid, although the assailants are suspected to have been jihadists who crossed over from Burkina Faso, which has been struggling with an Islamist insurgency since 2015.
In 2016, 19 people were killed in a jihadist attack in Grand-Bassam, a vacation resort near Ivory Coast’s economic capital Abidjan.
Security experts have long warned that the jihadist campaign in the Sahel, which sprang up in northern Mali in 2012 before advancing into Niger and Burkina Faso, could spread into countries on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea.
Last month, in a rare public intervention, the head of France’s foreign intelligence service Bernard Emie said that Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists were working on plans to extend their attacks south of Burkina Faso.
“These countries are themselves now targets,” he said. “The terrorists are already financing men who are spreading out in Ivory Coast and Benin.”