Burkina Faso to withdraw peacekeepers from Darfur

Burkina Faso has notified the United Nations that it will withdraw soldiers deployed as peacekeepers in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region by July next year, the foreign minister said late on Friday.

The West African nation, which has a battalion of 850 soldiers serving in the nearly 14,000 troop strong U.N.-African Union hybrid mission, has suffered a series of deadly attacks at home amid a rise in Islamist militant violence.

Burkina Faso’s government said in May that it would seek to bring some troops home to help reinforce domestic security.

Burkina Faso was rocked in January by an attack on a hotel and restaurant in its capital, Ouagadougou, claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, that killed 30 people. It has continued to suffer sporadic attacks this year.

Ouagadougou has also requested that its troops serving in a U.N. peacekeeping mission in neighbouring Mali be deployed to areas along the border with Burkina Faso.