Suspected jihadists killed around 10 police overnight in an attack in northern Burkina Faso near the border with Niger, security sources said on Friday.

“An outlying gendarmerie post in Seytenga in Seno province was targeted by terrorists last night,” a source said.

“About 10 gendarmes (died), four were wounded and there was major material damage,” the source said, adding that the toll was provisional.

Another security source confirmed the attack, the latest in a string of bloody assaults in the landlocked Sahel state.

The source added that the security forces had routed the assailants in a counter-attack and were now combing the area.

“Several (men) were still missing” as of Friday morning, the second source said.

One of the poorest countries in the world, Burkina Faso has been gripped by a nearly seven-year-old insurgency launched by jihadists crossing from neighbouring Mali.

More than 2,000 people have died and some 1.8 million people have fled their homes.

Attacks have been concentrated in the north and east of the country.

The nation has been under military rule since January, when colonels angered at failures to roll back the insurgency ousted the elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore.

After a relative lull, jihadist attacks resumed, inflicting a toll of more than 200 civilian and military dead over the past three months.

On Thursday, four gendarmes were killed in an attack at Barani, in the northwest, the army said, while a soldier and a civilian died in a raid by unidentified men on a gold mine near Ouahigouya in the north. (AFP)