"The attack happened while their convoy was returning from escorting a mission to a mining complex at Boungou, the ministry said."
Local and expatriate mine workers have also been targeted, kidnapped and killed and attacks have been launched on high profile "Western" targets in the capital of Ouagadougou.
You have gone to a lot of effort to try and paint me as biased. The map I took was from the paper from the Moroccan think tank that identified the heads of the new group JNIM that announced their formation in a public video last year. You seem to be the biased one who is trying to deny and down play the risk. It is still early days with this new group and the escalation is a worry. Hopefully some of their leaders might have been killed in the recent raid. Muslims have been a feature of West Africa since they crossed the Sahara desert in the 8th century AD, so are not a new phenomemun. The first known Jihad in Africa happened in the 17th century and first successful Jihad in
"1802, Uthman Dan Fodio, a Fulani scholar, led a major jihad. With the help of a large Fulani cavalry and Hausa peasants, Uthman Dan Fodio overthrew the region’s Hausa rulers and replaced them with Fulani emirs. The movement led to centralization of power in the Muslim community, education reforms, and transformations of law. Uthman Dan Fodio also sparked a literary revival with a production of religious work that included Arabic texts and vernacular written in Arabic script. His heirs continued the legacy of literary production and education reform."
You can find relevant history links on the Jihadists here.
You see the fact that Burkina Faso is dominantly Muslim is because of the Jihadists who came in the past. From my recollection historical Jihads were able to pushed as far south as Southern Cameroon/Congo where there are still incursions by Jihadists (Boko Haram) in the north of Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad to this day.
These people don't see the world in terms of political boundaries and in effect they control large swaths of the countries in which they operate in Africa, rendering those boundaries ineffectual.
They are also clever, so it seems, as I believe they have managed to read the political situation in Burkina Faso very well, to the extent of passing some power back to the old ruling party in the form of the new prime minister, ie they are trying to force political rifts to occur. As I said the appointment of the new prime minister was a marriage of necessity IMO. The president either appointed the new prime minister or risked having the old ruling party's influence spread in the north and throughout the country. So they are much smarter than mere opportunistic raiders as you have previously tried to coined them, they have read the politics in the country and are using there attacks to ferment political divisions. Maybe your biases need to be questioned. Esh
(20min delay)