Burkina Faso, brutally and deliberately killed two members of the staff of Médecins Sans Frontières

ROME – Two Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff members were killed in the Boucle du Mouhiun region in northwestern Burkina Faso. It happened yesterday morning, February 8, along the road between Dédougou and Tougan. Some armed men fired at a clearly recognizable MSF vehicle in which a four-person team of the humanitarian organization was traveling. Two members of them were killed instantly; the other two managed to escape. The two victims, both Burkinabé nationals, had been working with MSF as a driver since July 2021 and logistics supervisor since June 2020. They were 39 and 34 years old respectively.

Healthcare activities stopped. “We are shocked and outraged by this assassination. This is a deliberate and intentional attack against a well-identified humanitarian team and during its activity,” said Dr. Isabelle Defourny, president of MSF. “Our priority is to support the two surviving colleagues and the families of the missing colleagues. But we will also have to hear from all the parties to the conflict as soon as possible to understand what happened”. While waiting to learn the truth about this tragic event, MSF has temporarily suspended its activities in the Boucle du Mouhoun region.

The country’s political and humanitarian crisis. Burkina Faso is facing an unprecedented political, security and humanitarian crisis, with nearly two million people displaced by fighting between armed groups and government forces. Between July and December 2022, MSF teams in Burkina Faso, operating in four regions of the country, provided nearly 400,000 medical consultations and assisted nearly 4,300 women during childbirth.

The jihadists had kidnapped 39 children, including 4 newborns. Episodes of episodes of violence that follow one another and demonstrate how the “Country of righteous men” is prey to political and geopolitical convulsions, with the usual jihadist groups at the center of the scene, already seen wherever there are situations of institutional vacuum, evidently financed by regional and foreign forces. The Burkina Faso army, for example, days ago had to free 66 women and children kidnapped in early January by a jihadist commando while they were collecting food in the northern region of the Sahel. National broadcaster RTB reported that the armed forces located the hostages during a military operation in the North-Central region and took them to Ouagadougou, the country’s capital. The liberated group included 39 children, including four newborns in France.

Overview of the general situation in the country. This state of affairs, which is under the eyes of various international observers and numerous humanitarian operators working in the country, above all highlights the role of France, which is undergoing a weakening of its post-colonial influence, not only on Burkina Faso , but evidently on the entire African continent. And this is demonstrated among other things by the fact that the transitional authorities of the country, as well as the numerous street demonstrations, no longer want to have any relationship whatsoever with the French ambassador Luc Hallade. We therefore now have the certainty that the security crisis in Burkina is now underway a real civil war, with a substantial part of the population that is trying to overthrow the current ruling group of the state, which came to power in the last October, when Lieutenant Colonel Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba, president of the country, was relieved of his duties and replaced by Ibrahim Traoré, head of the anti-jihadist forces, was presented as the new head of the country. Damiba and his friends had overthrown the democratically elected president just nine months earlier.