[NEWS.YAHOO] Ivory Coast said Monday it had captured a jihadist who led a deadly attack on a frontier post this month and arrested a "very large" number of his subordinates."The commander of the team who led the action was taken yesterday," Defence Minister Hamed Bakayoko said at a military camp in Abidjan, during a speech honouring soldiers killed during the border raid.
He did not identify the individual or give any details about the capture.
"We will go further as the investigation progresses. We will know who he was in contact with, who is behind it," he said.
Bakayoko also said the authorities had carried out a "very large (number) of arrests of people directly involved" in the attack.
The military say "around 10" army personnel died and six were maimed on June 11 when dozens of jihadists mounted a pre-dawn attack at Kafolo, on the northeastern border with Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
Other sources put the corpse count at 12, comprising 11 soldiers and a gendarme, and describe the raid as a reprisal for an anti-jihadist crackdown.
It was the first assault by Islamist gunnies on Ivorian soil since March 2016, when a raid on hotel terraces in the southeastern beach resort of Grand-Bassam left 19 people dead.
The latest attack was carried out by the Group to Support Islam and Moslems (GSIM), an organization linked to al-Qaeda, according to a source in Burkina Faso.
Bakayoko said the arrests of people who took part in the assault came thanks to photos retrieved from mobile phones.
On June 18, the Ivorian army said it had carried out a sweep in the Kafolo area and in the neighbouring Camoe National Park, a reputed haven for jihadists.
Troops picked up 27 people, destroyed logistical material and seized communications equipment, it said.
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