*💣Bomb Kills 7⃣ Security Personnel in 🇧🇫Burkina Faso*
Seven members of the security forces were killed early Tuesday after their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in eastern Burkina Faso, security sources said. The fatalities were gendarmes and troops who had been sent to the town of Pama as reinforcements after a police station there came under attack, they said.
One of the sources said the blast, caused by an improvised explosive device, killed eight people. The earlier attack in Pama lasted an hour and but caused no casualties, although the police station was set ablaze. There were no immediate details about on the roadside blast, but it bore the hallmark of attacks attributed to jihadists that have shaken the country's east in recent months.
The Sahel state, one of the poorest countries in the world, has been battling Islamist violence since 2015, starting with cross-border incursions in the north. The recent surge of attacks in the east is the result of pressure on jihadist insurgents in neighbouring Mali and Niger, experts say.
