Three Dead In Anti-terror Operation In Burkina Capital

An operation by security forces Tuesday against suspected jihadists left three people dead in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, an AFP reporter saw.

Ouagadougou, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd May, 2018 ) :An operation by security forces Tuesday against suspected jihadists left three people dead in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, an AFP reporter saw.

Two corpses were seen in front of a house and a third in a courtyard after a pre-dawn operation that a police officer said also left three gendarmes wounded. Local resident Issiaka Ilboudo, who lives opposite the house in the neighbourhood of Rayongo on the southwestern rim of Ouagadougou, said there had been "intense gunfire".

"It was around 3am that we heard noise, it was people running on the roofs of the houses," Ilboudo said. "We then heard shooting, which sometimes lasted 30 or 45 minutes, then stopped and resumed." The police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the operation lasted from 3am to 7am.

Another resident, Pascal Lengani, said the house had been newly built and put up for rent last July, but nobody in the neighbourhood knew the inhabitants or had any idea how many lived there Burkina Faso is in the grip of a three-year-old jihadist insurgency that has killed scores of people and driven thousands from their homes.

Many attacks have targeted security forces and officials on the border with Mali, while there have been three assaults in Ouagadougou that have claimed nearly 60 lives. Tuesday's operation came eight days after the assassination of the prefect -- the state's paramount representative at local level -- in Oursi, a town in the far north near the Mali frontier.

In April, the authorities in the eastern and northern border regions arrested around 100 people and seized explosives.