Anonymous insurgents murdered 19 people and injured 13 in an assault around the town of Arbinda in northern Burkina Faso on Sunday, the government said.

Hundreds of people have passed on in Islamist violence over the past months and more than 150,000 have been forced to flee as jihadist groups invade the arid Sahel region.

Once a pocket of calm in the Sahel, Burkina has suffered a spillover of Islamist violence from neighboring Mali, where an assault on a village on Sunday left at least 95 dead and more than a dozen missing.

Deteriorating security fostered the government to announce a state of emergency in several northern provinces bordering Mali in December, which was extended by six months after jihadists assaulted civilians in Arbinda’s Soum province.

Burkina’s armed forces have launched a search operation across the area targeted by Sunday’s attack, the government said late on Monday.