French counter-terrorism forces based in west Africa killed ten suspected jihadists accused of involvement in a massacre of police officers in Burkina Faso last November, the French military announced on Thursday.
The suspected jihadists were from a group affiliated with the radical Ansarul Islam movement that has carried out “numerous attacks against civilians” and the security forces in the northern Burkina Faso region of Inata, the French chief of defense staff said in a statement.
A total of 57 people were killed on November 14 when several hundred men attacked a police base in Inata near the Malian border.
The attack was the deadliest to target security forces in Burkina Faso since the start of an Islamist insurgency in 2015.
It caused an outcry in the impoverished country, where many people accused the government of leaving under-equipped soldiers at the mercy of the myriad extremist groups which have sprouted up across west Africa in the past decades.
Mutinous soldiers in Burkina Faso overthrew the country’s President Roch Marc Christian Kabore last month, citing what they called his inept handling of the insurgency, among other factors.
