“An exceptional recruitment of 5,000 new soldiers is being made for the national army. They will serve for at least five years,” Defense Minister Kassoum Coulibaly said in a statement. Burkina Faso is ruled by a military junta after a coup a little over a year ago.
The announcement is directly related to an attack last week in which over 50 soldiers were killed in an ambush. The IS terrorist movement has claimed responsibility for the crime.
A statement on the Amaq media channel, which relays messages from IS, said the Islamist extremist group “inflicted massive casualties on Burkina Faso’s military in an ambush”.
The attack was carried out in the province of Oudalan near the border with Mali. According to the military, 160 members of the terrorist movement were killed.
The details of the latest violence came as sources in Mali announced that at least 13 civilians had been killed in a terrorist attack on a village in the central part of the country.
The attackers then burned down the village of Kani-Bonzon, according to the local sources AFP spoke to.