Burkina Faso’s entire cabinet, including the prime minister, resigned on Friday after a surge in Islamist attacks in the once peaceful west African nation.



President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré said he accepted the resignations, including that of prime minister Paul Kaba Thieba, during a statement read on national television. No explanation was provided.

The government has faced mounting pressure over attacks by militants that have left dozens dead in recent months, including at the French embassy in the capital Ouagadougou, and a number of kidnappings of foreigners.

Last week, parliament voted to extend for six months a state of emergency in several northern provinces near the border with Mali, where many of the jihadis besieging the country are based.

Earlier this week officials said that Canadian geologist Kirk Woodman had been killed days after he was abducted from a gold mine exploration camp in northern Burkina Faso. No group has taken responsibility for his death, or the abduction of Canadian Edith Blais and Italian Luc Tacchetto, aid workers who have been missing since mid-December.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Friday that “as far as we know” Ms Blais was still alive and authorities were working to find out more about the disappearance of her and Mr Tacchetto.

Burkina Faso is in Africa’s Sahel region — the semi-arid strip that runs the width of the continent and separates the Sahara desert from the savannah — where much of western defence aid to the continent is focused. The largely lawless, sparsely populated areas between major cities in the region have become breeding grounds for deadly insurgent groups, notably al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

In 2016, the group perpetrated an attack on a Ouagadougou hotel popular with the French military and expatriates that killed 29 and signalled an era of increased insecurity in Burkina Faso. More recent attacks have sparked ethnic violence that has killed dozens.

The landlocked former French colony is among the world’s poorest countries, despite significant gold deposits, and has a long history of military coups since independence in 1960 — the most recent attempt was in 2015.

Source:https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/fe128cfa-1be8-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65

Islam a bad

Religion of peace my left ass..