The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused this Thursday the Burkina Faso Army of “summarily executing” more than 200 civilians, including 53 minors, on February 25 in three towns in the province of Yatenga, in the north of the country.
“The massacres in the villages of Nodin and Soro are just the latest mass killings of civilians committed by the Burkinabe Army in its counterinsurgency operations. The repeated failure of the Burkinabé authorities to prevent and investigate such atrocities underlines why “International aid is essential to support a credible investigation into possible crimes against humanity,” said HRW Executive Director Tirana Hassan.
Furthermore, the organization has attributed these killings to the military “campaign” against those civilians suspected of collaborating with jihadist groups operating in the region, among which the affiliates of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State stand out, and has urged the country’s authorities to carry out an “urgent investigation”, although the Burkina Faso Prosecutor’s Office announced the start of it in early March.
These massacres are among the worst since 2015, according to HRW, which puts the victims in Nodin at 44 dead and in Soro at 179, although it does not refer to the village of Komsilga, where executions had also initially been recorded.
The NGO has managed to interview around twenty people, including witnesses, survivors and local activists, who have detailed that, after a group of jihadists passed through the area, a military convoy arrived with more than a hundred soldiers. They began knocking “door to door” to ask people to leave their homes and show their identities.
Afterwards, the military allegedly shot at the population, which had previously been separated between men and women. The survivors claim that the victims were buried in several mass graves, although other bodies that were recovered days later received individual burial.
Although at the moment the identity of those responsible for the attack is unknown, it should be said that the north of the country was the scene on February 25 of a wave of jihadist attacks that left at least 30 dead in a Catholic church in the town of Essakane-Village and in a mosque in Natiaboani.
Burkina Faso, ruled since 2022 by a military junta headed by Ibrahim Traoré, has experienced a significant increase in insecurity since 2015, with attacks by affiliates of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, leading to a wave of internally displaced people and refugees to other countries in the region.
