Armed Islamist militants kidnapped around 50 women in Burkina Faso’s Ouagadougou.
According to Reuters: On January 12 and 13, Islamist militants kidnapped around 50 women looking for food in Burkina Faso’s northern province of Soum, a hotbed of jihadist activity, the government said.
The mass kidnapping is a first in the insurgency that spread from neighbouring Mali to Burkina Faso in 2015, despite costly international military efforts to contain it.
While Westerners and locals are occasionally kidnapped, women have never been abducted in such large numbers. The separate Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria has carried out mass kidnappings.
The women were apprehended while picking wild fruit outside the village of Liki, about 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the town of Aribinda, and in another location in the same district.
“Searching has begun with the goal of safely locating all of these innocent victims,” the government said in a statement.
Burkina Faso is one of several West African countries battling a violent insurgency linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State that has seized vast swaths of territory over the last decade.
According to the United Nations, thousands of people have been killed and more than 2.7 million have been displaced across the Sahel, where insecurity has hampered agriculture and contributed to rising hunger levels.
According to relatives, the missing women began searching for food in the surrounding bush because there was no longer enough to feed their families in the village. They were looking for fruit, leaves, and seeds to make powder for children.
Insurgents have blockaded parts of the arid north in recent months, causing acute food shortages, and delivering supplies to trapped citizens has become increasingly dangerous.
In September, militants attacked a 150-vehicle convoy transporting supplies to the northern town of Djibo, the capital of Soum.
“Women can walk up to 4 kilometres (into the bush) to look for food,” said one Aribinda villager who did not want to be identified for security reasons.
The men, according to the villager, were too afraid to venture far from their homes for fear of being shot by jihadists. “That’s why the women were abducted,” the villager explained.
Frustration with the authorities’ failure to restore security and protect civilians fueled two military coups in Burkina Faso last year.
The US State Department expressed grave concern about the women’s kidnapping.
“Those abducted must be immediately and unconditionally returned to their loved ones, and those responsible must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.
