Jihadist groups killed at least 30 soldiers in the African nation of Benin, in an attack on one of the country’s best-equipped military bases. The killings occurred near Benin’s northern border, with the insurgency-plagued countries of Niger and Burkina Faso.
“We’ve been dealt a very hard blow,” said the chief of staff of Benin’s national guard, Colonel Faizou Gomina.
The killers probably came from the neighboring country of Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso is a poor, landlocked country where rainfall is often barely enough to support agriculture. Terrorist groups with ties to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara control around half of Burkina Faso’s territory. Thousands of villagers there have been slaughtered by these terrorists. Tens of thousands of people in Burkina Faso are on the brink of starvation.
More than 120 soldiers in Benin were killed by jihadists between 2021 and December 2024. In December, gunmen killed three soldiers and wounded four others who were guarding an oil pipeline in the north-east. In 2022, Benin sent 3,000 troops to its northern border to prevent cross-border incursions and keep jihadists from taking over villages.
Cross-border killings are common in some African countries. In December 2023, at least 500 Nigerians were slaughtered by marauding terrorists from across the border in Cameroon. The previous month, at least 50 people were kidnapped in northern Cameroon, near the border with Chad.
Boko Haram terrorists infest the Lake Chad region, near the borders between four countries (Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon). In March 2020, those violent Islamic extremists killed 98 Chadian soldiers in Boma near Lake Chad, the deadliest single attack in Chad’s history. Boko Haram has killed 50,000 people in northeastern Nigeria, and also killed villagers in neighboring northern Cameroon and eastern Niger.
