Jihadist armed groups in Burkina Faso have intensified their attacks on civilians in recent months, “massacring villagers, displaced persons and Christian worshippers,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced on Wednesday in a report accompanied by horrific testimonies.
“The attackers were shooting everywhere randomly, I saw dozens of bodies,” a woman who survived an attack in May that left at least 80 dead and nearly 40 injured in a displaced persons camp in Goubré (north) told HRW.
Door-to-door executions, throat-slitting, dismembered bodies, raped women… The international human rights organization details over ten pages the atrocities committed since the beginning of the year by armed groups against civilians in this Sahelian country.
Cited in the report, the organization Acled, which lists victims of conflicts around the world, says it has counted more than 26,000 people killed – soldiers, militia and civilians combined – in Burkina Faso since the start of the conflict in 2016.
In the first eight months of the year alone, Acled recorded “more than 6,000” deaths, including around 1,000 civilians killed by “Islamist armed groups”.
HRW clarified that “these figures do not include the 100 to 400 civilians killed during the attack on August 24” in Barsalogho, in the center of the country.
In Niamana, in the far west, a resident says: “We are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the authorities are pushing us to return to villages where security is not guaranteed, and on the other, the jihadists are attacking us when we return to our fields and homes.”
Other testimonies, collected across the country, corroborate the statements of this resident.
Asked by HRW about the allegations of forced returns, the Minister of Justice, Edasso Rodrigue Bayala, affirms that the return of displaced persons is voluntary and “preceded by actions to secure localities and reopen basic social services.”
The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM) “operates in 11 of the 13 regions” of the country, according to Acled, and regularly carries out attacks in neighboring Niger and Mali – such as in Bamako, the Malian capital, where it claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a dual attack on the military airport and a gendarmerie camp.
This new HRW report illustrates the impotence of Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s military junta in the face of this escalation of jihadist violence.
When he seized power in a coup in September 2022, he promised to regain control of the country in “six months”, promising that the fight against “terrorism” would be his “priority”.
