Gunmen kill dozens in eastern Burkina Faso

Dozens of people have been killed in an attack by gunmen on a livestock market in the eastern Burkina Faso town of Kompienga, residents and security sources say. 

Witnesses and local residents estimated the death toll of Saturday’s attack at around 30.

The assailants "burst into the market riding motorbikes and started shooting, especially at people who were trying to flee," AFP quoted one resident as saying on Sunday.

A second resident said, "It's hard to say how many people were killed. There were bodies in the market, and others in the bush."

He added, "More than 30 bodies were collected" after the attack. He said his brother was at the market at the time and he had had "no news" from him since.

A local official put the death toll at "several dozen" including vendors and residents.

The attack was blamed by a security source on armed groups with links to al-Qaeda and Daesh Takfiri terrorist groups operating across the region.

The east and north of the impoverished African country are the hardest hit by attacks by terrorists, who have killed more than 900 people and caused some 860,000 people to flee their homes in the past five years.

In the most recent attack on Friday, a convoy of mainly shopkeepers escorted by a local self-defense unit came under fire in the north of the West African country, leaving more than a dozen dead. The bloodshed in Loroum province was also blamed on al-Qaeda and Daesh-linked terrorists.

Burkina Faso is part of a regional anti-terror group along with Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Chad.

According to UN figures, the ongoing unrest in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger killed around 4,000 people last year.

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