For a Decade, the West African Sahel Nation Has Wrestled with Containing Armed Groups.
Approximately 170 individuals were reportedly “executed” in assaults on three villages in northern Burkina Faso a week ago, according to a statement by regional prosecutor Aly Benjamin Coulibaly on Sunday. The attacks occurred in the villages of Komsilga, Nodin, and Soroe in Yatenga province on February 25, highlighting escalating violence in the country.
The assaults resulted in injuries to several individuals and inflicted material damage, stated the prosecutor for the northern town of Ouahigouya, refraining from assigning responsibility to any particular group. He confirmed that his office has initiated an investigation and urged the public to provide any relevant information.
The violence continuous.
Survivors of the attacks told news agency AFP that dozens of women and young children were among the victims.
Local security sources cited by AFP said the attacks were separate from deadly incidents that happened on the same day at a mosque in the rural community of Natiaboani in eastern Burkina Faso and a church in the northern village of Essakane.
Authorities have yet to release an official death toll for those attacks, but a senior church official said at the time that at least 15 civilians were killed in the Natiaboani attack.
About half of Burkina Faso is outside government control, as armed groups have ravaged the country for years.
The violence has killed almost 20,000 people and displaced more than two million people in one of the world’s poorest countries in a region wracked by instability.
Anger at the state’s inability to end the insecurity played a major role in two military coups in 2022.
Under the leadership of current head of state Captain Ibrahim Traore, there has been a concerted effort to prioritize a robust security response aimed at reclaiming territory from rebel groups.
Ali Kabre, an independent journalist situated in the capital city of Ouagadougou, shared with Al Jazeera that the recent attacks were probably orchestrated by armed groups seeking to demonstrate their continued significance within the country. This action comes in response to military countermeasures, including regular air strikes, which have placed these groups on the defensive.
The coordinated attacks on February 25 targeted various locations, including a military detachment in Tankoualou in the east, a rapid response battalion in Kongoussi in the north, and soldiers in the northern region of Ouahigouya.
In response to these attacks, the army and members of the Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland (VDP), a civilian force supporting the military, launched operations that successfully “neutralised several hundred terrorists,” as reported by security sources cited by AFP.
Security Minister Mahamadou Sana characterized the wave of attacks as “coordinated” earlier in the week, attributing this shift in the enemy’s tactical approach to the destruction of terrorist bases and training camps, along with efforts to cut off their financing and supply routes.
Notably, mosques and imams have previously been targeted in attacks attributed to armed groups. Additionally, churches in Burkina Faso have been subjected to violence, and Christians have been abducted.
According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), the violence in January alone resulted in the deaths of 439 individuals.
