Former President of Niger Republic, Mahamadou Issoufou who was recently appointed by the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as a mediator to Burkina Faso, has claimed that about 40 per cent of the land mass is under the control of jihadists while the military government has control of 60 per cent.
Issoufou made the claim on Saturday in the capital Ouagadougou, after holding talks with military government officials on the country’s timetable for a return to democratic rule.
“Today, 40 per cent of the territory is out of the control of the state. Burkina Faso today is facing a multidimensional crisis: security, humanitarian, political and socioeconomic.
“These events, very painful, prove how difficult the security situation remains,” Issoufou said, following the talks with the military government’s leaders led by Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba.
In recent months, the West African country has witnessed increased militia attacks and violence which had led to the killing of many civilians, with last week’s massacre of 89 people in the northern village of Seytenga, being one of the worst massacres in the country’s history.
Reacting to the killing, Issoufou said the regional bloc will do everything possible to help the country return to democratic rule which was truncated by the military who seized power in January.
When Damiba overthrew elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore in the putsch, he had accused the president of failing to adequately tackle the violence of the rebels, and said restoring security would be his top priority.
As a result of the coup, ECOWAS suspended the country and threatened punitive measures unless its military rulers speed up the process to restore democracy.
But despite the military administration, Burkina Faso has been caught up in an escalating wave of violence attributed to rebel fighters allied to both al-Qaeda and the ISIL (ISIS) group.
The violence has so far claimed more than 2,000 lives and forced 1.9 million people to flee their homes.