Gunmen killed about 15 people in an attack on a mosque in northern Burkina Faso during prayers on Friday evening, a security source and a local official told Reuters.
The gunmen entered the mosque in the village of Salmossi in the Oudalan region bordering Mali and opened fire, the two sources said on Saturday. Others were seriously wounded, the security source said.
The identities of the gunmen were not yet clear.
An insurgency by groups with links to Islamic State and al Qaeda crossed into Burkina Faso this year from neighboring Mali, igniting ethnic and religious tensions, especially in northern regions.
The attacks have shattered a relative calm in Burkina Faso which, until this year, had largely been spared the kind of violence which has made large areas of the Sahel ungovernable, especially Mali.
The number of people forced to flee their homes in the worst-hit areas have increased more than six-fold since January to around 500 000, the United Nations and aid groups said on Friday.
Last week, 20 people were killed in an attack by suspected jihadists on a gold-mining site in the north.
![[File Photo]Service members of the Russian airborne forces line up before boarding Ilyushin Il-76 transport planes during drills at a military aerodrome in the Azov Sea port of Taganrog, Russia April 22, 2021. Picture taken with a drone.](https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/USNNHLG3JJPTDCL5ZXLFMBO3YI-120x86.jpg)
