Burkina jihadists claim attack on police positions

Ouagadougou (AFP) - A night attack on two police positions in Burkina Faso was claimed by jihadists who killed 12 soldiers in the area in December, a senior official said Tuesday.

There were no deaths in the raids, which happened late on Monday, but a woman police officer was injured, Mohamed Dah, the top official of the Soum region near Mali, told AFP.

The attack coincided with Africa's biggest film festival Fespaco, which is being held in the capital Ouagadougou with tight security in place.

Dah said the assailants, who were travelling by motorbike, attacked police posts in two villages.

In Tongomayel, they "torched the police station" leaving a poster in Arabic in the name of the Ansarul Islam jihadist group. In Baraboule, they sprayed the police station with bullets and stole two computers from an adjoining government office, he said.

Ansarul Islam claimed the December 16 attack on an army squad near the Malian border in what was the deadliest-ever assault on the military.

The group is led by Burkinabe Malam Ibrahim Dicko, a radical preacher who wants to create an Islamist "kingdom" in the region, experts say.

Long spared the Islamist violence affecting several nations in the region, notably Mali and Niger, Burkina has been hit by a series of attacks and kidnappings since April 2015.

Most of the raids have occurred near the northern border, but in January 2016, 30 people were killed and 71 wounded in Ouagadougou after gunmen stormed a restaurant and a four-star hotel, taking hostages.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the attacks.