Fresh attack in Burkina Faso leaves 60 civilians dead

A local prosecutor in Burkina Faso, Lamine Kabore, said Sunday that people wearing the uniforms of the Burkinabe armed forces killed around 60 civilians on Friday. An investigation into the killings has been launched, he said. The attack was reported from the village of Karma in Yatenga province in the borderlands near Mali. The area is overrun by Islamist groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State that have carried out repeated attacks for years.

No further details about the attack are known yet.

Armed groups have been increasingly attacking civilians since 2022, Human Rights Watch said in March. State security forces and volunteer defence troops have conducted a number of abusive counter-terrorism operations in the country, the group said.

Unidentified assailants killed 40 people and wounded 33 others in an attack on the army and volunteer forces in the same region of northernBurkinaFasonear Ouahigouya on April 15, according to the government.

The attack was supposedly carried out by jihadists in northern Burkina Faso. A detachment of soldiers and civilian volunteers "was the target of an attack by unidentified armed men on Saturday at about 4 pm,"the statement said.

The attack happened in the village of Aorema near the town of Ouahigouya, not far from the border with Mali. This attackin Burkina Faso came nine days after gunmen killed 44 people in the villages of Kourakou and Tondobi in the north of the West African country.

Civilians are being encouraged by the government to join local defence forces to try and control eight years of violence in which thousands of people have died and millions have been forced to flee their homes.

The country saw two coups last year by the military which stresses that it will retake control of the country.

Unrest in the region began in Mali in 2012 when Islamists hijacked a Tuareg separatist uprising. The violence has since spread intoBurkinaFasoand Niger, killing thousands and displacing over 2.5 million people.

(With inputs from agencies)

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