“The Spanish Salesian Antonio Cesar Fernandez was assassinated during a jihadist attack between Togo and Burkina Faso,” the Salesians of Don Bosco order said in a statement posted Friday on Twitter.
A Burkina security source added that a mobile customs unit “that had set up a control point in Nohao (near the border with Togo) was the target of a terrorist attack on Friday around 17h00″ local time and GMT.
On Saturday the toll stood at four customs officers killed along with the 72-year-old Spanish priest.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expressed Saturday on Twitter “all my affection for the family and colleagues of missionary Antonio Cesar Fernandez and all the victims of the terror attack in Burkina Faso”.
A local security source said the attack was carried out by “a group of around 20 gunmen who then fled into a wooded zone”.
Burkina Faso, in the heart of Africa's vast Sahel region, is struggling with a bloody Islamist insurgency as well as bouts of social unrest.
More than 300 people have been killed in the country in four years of jihadist attacks, according to an AFP count.
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