Dozens of suspected jihadists attacked a frontier post on Ivory Coast’s border with Burkina Faso before dawn on Thursday, killing around 10 soldiers, security sources said.
It is the first assault by Islamist extremists on Ivorian soil since March 2016, when a raid on the southeastern beach resort of Grand-Bassam left 19 people dead.
Thursday’s shooting attack “targeted an Ivorian frontier post at Kafolo,” where an anti-jihadist operation had just ended, one Ivorian source said, in an account confirmed by a Burkinabe source.
An Ivorian source said 12 people were killed — 11 soldiers and a gendarme — while six people were injured and two were listed as missing.
Another Ivorian source put the toll at nine dead, while a Burkinabe source said 10 troops, a gendarme and an assailant had been killed, and two people were missing.
“There were sounds of rifles toward the river,” an anonymous Kafolo resident said in a telephone interview.
The attack was carried out by dozens of armed individuals believed to be from the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), which has a hold in the area, according to a source.
