Armed Jihadist Militants Kidnap 50 Women While Looking for Food, Government of Burkina Faso Holds Search

Islamic State militant group north of Burkina Faso. (Wikimedia Commons/Aharan_kotogo)

JAKARTA - Armed jihadist militant groups kidnapped about 50 women seeking food in Soum Province, north of Burkina Faso, a hotbed of jihadist activities, on January 12 and 13, the government said on Monday.

The mass kidnapping was the first in an uprising to spread to Burkina Faso from neighboring Mali in 2015, despite international military efforts trying to contain him.

A group of armed men arrested the women while they were picking wild fruit outside Liki Village, about 15 km (10 miles) from the city of Aribinda, and then at another location in the same district.

"The search has begun with the aim of finding all these innocent victims safe and sound," the government said in a statement.

Relatives of the kidnapping victims told Reuters the missing women began exploring the bushes around them to look for food, as it was no longer enough to feed their families in the village. They look for fruit, leaves and seeds that are ground into powder for the children.

The rebel group is known to have blocked the arid northern part in recent months, causing acute food shortages and supply deliveries to trapped residents to become increasingly dangerous.

Thousands of people have been killed and more than 2.7 million people displaced across the Sahel, where insecurity has affected agriculture and contributed to rising rates of hunger, according to the United Nations.

"Women can walk 4 km (to the bushes) to find food," said a villager in Aribinda who did not want to be named for security reasons.

The villagers added that the people were too afraid to go far from their homes for fear of being shot by jihadists. "That's why the women were kidnapped," the villagers said.

Earlier, dozens of soldiers died in September last year, when insurgents attacked a convoy of 150 vehicles carrying supplies to the northern city of Djibo, the capital Soum.

If foreigners and local residents are sometimes arrested, the kidnapping of large numbers of women is unprecedented.

This is in contrast to Nigeria, where separate Boko Haram insurgents are carrying out mass kidnappings in the country.

Burkina Faso is one of several countries in West Africa struggling against an insurgency, facing violence linked to al Qaeda and ISIS that have seized large areas over the last decade.

Frustration over the failure of the authorities to restore security and protect civilians was a factor in two military coups in Burkina Faso last year.