Mon 04 March 2024:
A week ago, attacks on three villages in northern Burkina Faso killed approximately 170 people, according to a regional prosecutor, as violence flared across the country.
Aly Benjamin Coulibaly claimed in a statement on Sunday that he had received information of attacks on the villages of Komsilga, Nodin, and Soroe in Yatenga region on February 25, with a provisional toll of “around 170 people executed”.
The attacks left several others wounded and caused material damage, the prosecutor for the northern town of Ouahigouya said, without apportioning blame to any group.
He said his office ordered an investigation and appealed to the public for information.
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.
Ali Kabre, an independent journalist based in the capital, Ouagadougou, told Al Jazeera that the attacks were likely an attempt by armed groups to show they are “still relevant in the country” after being put on the back foot by the military who have targeted them with regular air attacks.
There were a number of attacks on February 25, notably against 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.
Mosques and imams have in the past been the target of attacks blamed on armed groups.
Churches in Burkina Faso have also at times been targeted and Christians have been kidnapped.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) says that 439 people were killed in such violence in January alone.
Armed groups have ravaged Burkina Faso for years, leaving roughly half of the country out of official control.
The violence has killed about 20,000 people and displaced more than two million in one of the world’s poorest countries, in an unstable region.
Anger over the state’s failure to remove the insecurity fueled two military coups in 2022.
Captain Ibrahim Traore, the current head of state, has stressed a robust security reaction in regaining territories from rebel factions.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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