A Mali-based Al-Qaeda linked terror group claimed responsibility on Saturday for attacks in neighboring Burkina Faso that left 16 people dead.
The attack also eight gunmen killed at the army headquarters and French embassy, Mauritanian news agency Alakhbar reported.
The Saturday attack also saw eighty others wounded in the coordinated attacks in the capital Ouagadougou, which follow two other major assaults there in the past two years.
The Al-Qaeda linked, Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), often uses Alakhbar when conducting attacks claimed responsibility for strikes against civilian and military targets across West Africa’s Sahel region.
Through Al-Qaeda pro-websites, the group a message reported that the attacks were carried out in response to the killing of one of JNIM’s leaders, Mohamed Hacen al-Ancari, in a recent raid by French forces.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for attacks witnessed near Burkina Faso’s porous border with Mali.
France intervened in Mali in 2013 to drive back Islamist militants who had seized the country’s desert north. It retains about 4,000 troops deployed across its former colonies in the arid Sahel region as part of the anti-terror Operation Barkhane and has aggressively gone after militant group leaders.
