At least 15 Nigerian Muslim pilgrims on their way to Senegal were slain when gunmen attacked the buses carrying them in Burkina Faso, the Nigerian government stated on Monday.
“President Muhammadu Buhari has received the tragic news of the murder,” the State House said in a statement, without providing further details on the attack.
A Nigerian presidency spokesperson informed Reuters through WhatsApp that the death toll was at 15 “so far”.
Unidentified assailants assaulted the bus convoy on Wednesday, killing 18 passengers, according to a Senegalese religious organization.
The pilgrims were traveling from Niger and Nigeria to Senegal for a religious ceremony, crossing conflict zones in northern Burkina Faso and central Mali.
“Eighteen passengers lost their lives during these attacks, and most of the survivors were robbed,” the Medina Baye Mosque in Kaolack, the Senegalese town where the victims were headed, said in a statement on Saturday.
Nigeria’s presidency said in the statement that it was in touch with Burkinabe authorities and awaiting the outcome of their investigation into the incident.
Burkina Faso’s foreign affairs minister Olivia Rouamba met with Nigeria’s ambassador to the country on Monday to discuss the killings.
“For the time being there is no concrete information or element picked up on the field that proves the veracity of these facts,” Rouamba said in a statement after the meeting.
She added that authorities had strongly discouraged travel through the north due to “huge risks” of attacks.
Burkina Faso is battling armed groups with links to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
Rebel fighters have spread over the tri-border area between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger and encroached on coastal West African states despite costly international efforts to stop them.
Regular attacks on towns and villages, army posts and United Nations peacekeepers have caused thousands of deaths, displaced more than two million people across the Sahel and aggravated food insecurity.
Aljazeera
