Islamic State carried out the kidnapping and killing of a Canadian citizen in Burkina Faso in January, the group’s weekly newspaper Al-Naba said, claiming responsibility in its latest issue without providing evidence.
Kirk Woodman’s body was found on Jan16, two days after his abduction by a dozen gunmen at a mining site operated by Vancouver-based Progress Minerals in the northeast of the landlocked West African country.
Burkina Faso officials said he had been shot, and his body was dumped in an area that the government says is under growing threat from Islamist militants.
Prior to the claim made in the Islamic State newspaper there had been no word on who was responsible, says a Reuters report.
In an article trumpeting Islamic State’s insurgencies in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, the newspaper detailed the operation to kidnap and kill the Canadian geologist and showed a photograph of what it claimed was his driver license.
The Islamic State newspaper said “the kidnapping and killing of a Canadian crusader” has increased the West’s interest in “the war of the Mujahideen” in Burkina Faso.
Woodman’s body was dumped in the desert by “the Caliphate soldiers”, Al-Naba said, though it put a date on Woodman’s execution using the Hijri, or Islamic, calendar, that would equate to Jan 25 - which would have been several days after the body was found.