Islamist militants kidnapped around 50 women searching for food in Burkina Faso’s northern province of Soum, a hotbed of jihadist activity, on Jan. 12 and 13, the government said on Monday.

The mass kidnapping is a first in the insurgency that spread to Burkina Faso from neighboring Mali in 2015 despite costly international military efforts to contain it.

While Westerners and locals are occasionally captured, women had not previously been abducted in such numbers. Mass kidnappings have been carried out in Nigeria by the separate Boko Haram insurgency there.