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On Thursday night, unknown assailants carried out two attacks in northern Burkina Faso, resulting in the deaths of 44 people, according to authorities.
The attacks took place in the villages of Kourakou and Tondobi in the Sahel region, an area plagued by repeated attacks by Islamist groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State for years.
It remains unclear which group carried out the attacks, but on Saturday, authorities attributed them to “armed terrorist groups.”
Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries, has seen more than 2 million people displaced and thousands killed by violence. The unrest led to two coups by the military last year, which has promised to regain control of the country but has been unable to curb the bloodshed.
The region’s unrest began in Mali in 2012 when Islamists took over a Tuareg separatist uprising. Since then, the violence has spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, threatening to destabilize coastal countries further afield.