Free Republic

The West African country is training and arming everyday citizens to protect remote communities from terrorist groups. But some fear the strategy will lead to even more violence. KONGOUSSI — Ousséni is proud, and as he looks out at the rust-colored hills in the province of Bam, in north-central Burkina Faso, his face lights up. The 56-year-old farmer doesn't want to use his real name for this article. But having "finally returned" to his village after months of shock and shame, he says also feels at peace in a way he'd no longer thought possible. And that's because Ousséni feels...

Fourteen soldiers were killed after their patrol was ambushed in northern Burkina Faso in one of the worst attacks on the army during a five-year-old jihadist insurgency, the government said. The attack took place Wednesday in the country’s north, near the border with Mali and Niger, and came ahead of presidential and legislative elections on November 22. “A convoy of the Tin-Akoff military detachment” was ambushed by “armed terrorist groups”, government spokesperson Remis Fulgance Dandjinou said on Thursday. Northern Burkina Faso has been badly hit by jihadists who began making incursions from neighbouring Mali in 2015. The attacks have left...

Rasmane Badini fled with his family from Silgadji following an attack by jihadists Sleeping in huts made of straw, fabric and plastic sheets, nearly 5,000 people forced from their homes by jihadist violence in Burkina Faso have some shelter but little else. The group faces a precarious future at Boulounga... The United Nations says the Sahel faces "one of the greatest humanitarian crises in the world". Earlier this month, it mobilised donor countries and institutions to step up financial aid, with promises of around $1.7 billion (1.43 billion euros). "My dream is to have a real roof over the heads...

French military forces fighting Islamic extremists in West Africa killed more than 50 jihadists and detained four in an operation last week in Mali, French officials said. Defense Minister Florence Parly tweeted Monday night that the French force in the region also confiscated weapons and equipment from the fighters in the operation last Friday, which she said “shows once again that terrorist groups cannot act with impunity.” Drones monitoring the region in northern Mali spotted a convoy of suspected fighters on motorcycles, prompting France to launch the operation, first with airstrikes and then with a ground operation by French commandos,...

ISLAMIC State is taking over swathes of Africa like it did in Syria and Iraq with "staggeringly brutal" tactics, the Pentagon has warned. According to a report from West Point, the US officer training academy, the group's expansion and regrouping on the continent shows "Islamic State is far from defeated". "By the summer of 2020, it had become resolutely clear that the Islamic State was a changed organisation, but by no means a beaten one," the report, published by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Centre, said. The Pentagon report said there has been a "marked upward curve of claimed cumulative attacks...

{Full Title}EXPOSED: Peter Strzok Grew Up In Iran and Saudi Arabia, Worked As Obama and Brennan’s Envoy To Iranian Regime Why doesn’t anybody talk about the Iranian takeover of our government, between this arrogant FBI hatchet man and Valerie Jarrett? And we are finally noticing a Russian threat — years after people on the Right were ridiculed for concerns about socialism and Communism by the left-leaning media and Democrats who loved socialism, Communism, and the Soviet Union. At a time when Russian moles were actually infiltrating and running things, the left didn’t care. Today, when Russia is substantially diminished, they’re...

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse have been detained by mutinying soldiers in the capital during an apparent coup attempt. The development on Tuesday came hours after soldiers took up arms and staged a mutiny at a key base in Kati, a town close to Bamako. It followed a weeks-long political crisis that has seen opposition protesters taking to the streets to demand the departure of Keita, accusing him of allowing the country's economy to collapse and mishandling a worsening security situation. Mali's years-long conflict, in which ideologically-motivated armed groups have stoked ethnic tensions while jockeying...

The top U.N. human rights body agreed on Monday to hold an urgent debate on allegations of “systemic racism, police brutality and violence against peaceful protests” in the United States and elsewhere on Wednesday. The U.N. Human Rights Council’s decision followed a request last week by Burkina Faso on behalf of African countries in response to the killing of George Floyd, an African American, on May 25 under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer. His death has ignited protests across the nation and worldwide. “We think it is a moment to really discuss this issue, as you have...

France said on Friday its military forces had killed al Qaeda's North Africa chief Abdelmalek Droukdel, a key Islamist fighter that its forces had been hunting for more than seven years, during an operation in Mali. "On June 3, French army forces, with the support of their local partners, killed the emir of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel, and several of his closest collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali," French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly wrote on Twitter. The announcement of the death of Droukdel comes almost six months after former colonial power France and regional...

Gunmen on motorbikes fired into the crowded market in Kompienga town around lunchtime on Saturday, eyewitnesses and residents said. Local media earlier reported 20 killed, while quoting sources as saying the death toll could be considerably higher. AFP news agency quoted local residents as saying 30 died. The government blamed the attack on "terrorists", a phrase usually used to describe al-Qaeda and Islamic State-linked jihadists Burkina Faso has been battling in recent years. Despite occasional government claims of success against the Islamist militants, the insecurity in the north and east of Burkina Faso has dramatically escalated. Jihadists have often targeted...

The leader of Al-Qaeda In The Arabian Peninsula claiming responsibility for the terrorist attack in Pensacola, Florida December 6th that killed three and wounded eight at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. AQAP's leader Qassim al-Rimi made an audio speech saying the group was behind the shooting attack carried out by Saudi Air Force Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani. Alshamrani shot dead by police. Officials like Pensacola Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz and Attorney General William Barr have characterized the attack as a "terrorist attack" but both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump have not described it as a "terrorist attack"........

A German landlord was fined on Tuesday for advertising that he would only rent to German citizens. The 81-year-old was fined €1,000 ($1,100) for the discriminatory advertisement after a prospective tenant from Burkina Faso was rejected and then complained to authorities. A district court in the southern city of Augsburg banned the landlord from placing further advertisements that are limited to just Germans under threat of more substantial fines. […] The complainant, who was moving from Munich, told the court that the landlord swiftly ended an introductory phone call after he realized the applicant was foreign. The landlord told the...

West Africa is a well known transit center for smuggled diamonds, especially for Lebanese traders, with many sales funding criminal and terrorist groups. European and American intelligence sources have long known that Hezbollah has raised significant amounts of money in West Africa through the largely Shiite Muslim Lebanese communities in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Togo. There are an estimated 120,000 Lebanese in West Africa, mostly involved in import-export businesses.

Burkina Faso: Muslims murder 20 in jihad massacre at gold-mining site OCT 9, 2019 8:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER If you report on this kind of incident and its ideological root causes in the United States, you’re the villain, not the killers, and must be denounced and shunned by all decent people. “Suspected jihadists kill 20 in Burkina Faso,” Vanguard, October 7, 2019: Twenty people were killed in an attack by suspected jihadists on a gold-mining site in northern Burkina Faso on Friday, two sources said. Gunmen came to the Dolmande site in Soum province and fired on people working...

The Star Tribune is nevertheless tired of being played for a chump. Coolican notes: “This again raised questions about her marriage to Elmi and whether it was sincere or some effort to help Elmi’s immigration status, or even whether Elmi is her brother. She has denied Elmi is her brother but declined to answer any questions about the circumstances of her marriage to him.” • Her 2016 statement to the contrary notwithstanding, the evidence strongly suggests that Omar never split from Hirsi before her election to Congress last year. Their alleged 2011 divorce “in their faith tradition” appears to be...

60 Missing, 25 Dead in Attack on Malian Base on Burkina Faso Border 10/02/2019 Mali (International Christian Concern) – Heavily armed extremists attacked two bases in Mali along the border with Burkina Faso. During these attacks which took place on Monday, Sept 30, 25 Malian soldiers were killed. Another 60 soldiers are still missing due to the attacks, which overran the bases. The battle continued into Tuesday, when the Malian forces alongside Burkinabe forces were able to retake the town of Boulikessi. The government of Mali has stated that they believe these assailants to be part of Ansarul al-Islam, a...

A fungus - genetically enhanced to produce spider toxin - can rapidly kill huge numbers of the mosquitoes that spread malaria, a study suggests. Trials, which took place in Burkina Faso, showed mosquito populations collapsed by 99% within 45 days. Conducting the study, researchers at the University of Maryland in the US - and the IRSS research institute in Burkina Faso - first identified a fungus called Metarhizium pingshaense, which naturally infects the Anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria. The next stage was to enhance the fungus. They turned to a toxin found in the venom of a species of funnel-web...

An attack on a church in the African nation of Burkina Faso Sunday. Six dead including the priest with the church burned down.... "It was the army that came to the rescue" the words of France's leading opposition politician Marine Le Pen in relation to the rescue of four hostages from Islamic terrorists in Burkina Faso Thursday night..... A Christian town in northern Syria rocketed by jihadists Sunday. Six were killed..... Almost a year after he was arrested live streaming outside a child sex abuse trial involving Muslim defendants summarily tried and sent off to prison British activist Tommy Robinson...

"I Don't Know Why They Attacked Our Village": Persecution of Christians, February 2019 by During just the first two weeks of February, "[a]t least 10 incidents of vandalism and desecration of Catholic churches have been reported in France." — Catholicherald.co.uk, February 15, 2019; France. "The attack was so terrible that Haroon's kidney was cut into two pieces" from the stabbings....After he was rushed to hospital, "doctors were forced to remove his kidney." As is common in such cases, police and local authorities tried to pressure the family not to press charges against the Muslim youths.... — Persecution.org; International Christian Concern;...

Gunmen have opened fire on a church in northern Burkina Faso, killing at least six people, officials say. The attackers reportedly arrived on seven motorbikes at the end of Sunday's service and killed the pastor, two of his sons and three other worshippers. It is the first attack on a church since jihadist violence erupted in the West African country in 2016. Fighters affiliated to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group as well as the local Ansarul Islam have been active.