On September 21, 2023, at least nine people were shot dead and others injured by a group of unknown armed men who attacked a convoy of buses in the Pusiga district in the northeast of the country, near the border with Burkina Faso.
The attack occurred near the border with Burkina Faso, where Islamist militants are conducting an insurgency. Nine people were killed and several were injured in an ambush by unknown assailants in northern Ghana on Thursday morning, said Zubeiru Abdulai, the head of the local Pusiga district.
The assailants fired upon two vehicles carrying traders who were on their way to the Cinkasse market, said the head of the local Pusiga district, adding that the injured were being treated at the government hospital in Bawku. Most of the victims were women. “The traders were in a convoy escorted by the police due to armed attacks in Bawku and its surroundings when armed unknown individuals suddenly fired at close range on the buses in the vicinity of Pusiga, resulting in nine deaths and several injuries,” Mr. Abdulai stated.
This attack comes during a period of communal tensions between the Kusasi and Mamprusi ethnic groups in the Bawku region, near the border with Burkina Faso. These tensions escalated in February when an immigration officer was killed and two of his colleagues were injured. Following that incident, Ghanaian authorities sent 1,000 soldiers to the border with Burkina Faso to secure the area.
