Burkina Faso’s parliament voted on Friday to extend a state of emergency by six months in several northern provinces where attacks by Islamist militants have surged in recent months, including one on Thursday that killed twelve people.
The government said the latest attack was carried out by three dozen jihadists on the town of Gasseliki in Soum province near the Malian border. Two Gasseliki residents told newsmen that the men opened fire and set fire to shops in town.
Burkina Faso imposed the state of emergency on December thirty-first after militants killed ten gendarmes in a single attack. Security has deteriorated in Burkina as seek to increase their influence across the poorly policed scrublands of the Sahel region just south of the Sahara Desert.
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