Burkina Faso, the accusation against the army: massacre of 223 civilians, including 56 children

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Burkina Faso’s regular army massacred “at least” 223 civilians, including 56 children, in two villages in the country on February 25. The mass execution, one of the most brutal since 2015, appears to be part of a military campaign against civilians “accused of collaborating with armed Islamist groups” and may constitute a crime against humanity.

This was revealed by a report by Human Rights Watch, a US NGO that monitors human rights violations. Burkina Faso has for years established itself as the epicenter of jihadist insurgencies in the Sahel region of Africa, triggering repression attempts that culminated in the double military coup in 2022 and the installation of the military junta led by Ibrahim Traoré.

The massacre, we read in the HRW report, took place in the two villages of Nondin and Soro, in the northern province of Yatenga. In Nondin the military reportedly killed 44 people, including children, while another 179 civilians and 36 children were targeted in Soro. The double massacre occurred close to days marked by a flare-up of jihadist violence, with several raids recorded between 24 and 25 February on military targets, civil infrastructures and religious sites.

Silence on complaints and the vicious circle of the Sahel

Defense Minister Mahamoudou Sana denounced the “simultaneous and coordinated” attacks by armed groups of Islamist affiliation, only to gloss over the accusations of mass executions already received by the authorities. The HRW report highlights how Aly Benjamin Coulibaly, prosecutor of the High Court of Ouahigouya, had already declared having received information about “deadly attacks” in the Yatenga area, with a provisional toll of 170 victims. According to the NGO’s reconstruction, the military attacked the population, accusing them of their “complicity” in the jihadist attacks. “They said that we don’t collaborate with them because we didn’t inform them of the jihadist movements,” says a 32-year-old woman interviewed by Human Rights Watch, who survived the massacre with a wound on her leg.

The NGO calls for an independent investigation with the support of the African Union and the United Nations, with the aim of shedding clarity on a massacre that recalls a pattern already seen in Burkina Faso and the rest of the Sahel: army reprisals against the population civil, as an “outlet” after the attacks suffered by jihadist militias and the suspicion of connivance in their favor. In neighboring Mali, which itself has just returned from two coups in 2020 and 2021, the military army is accused of the massacre of 300 civilians in the village of Mourra, in a massacre which apparently took advantage of the collaboration of contractors Wagner’s Russians. In Burkina Faso itself, raids have been recorded with estimates in the hundreds of victims, variously attributed to armed groups affiliated with jihadist networks or – precisely – to the regular army. The conflict between militias and state authorities has exacerbated a humanitarian crisis which today counts over two million displaced people in the country and 6.3 million Burkinabé (out of approximately 23 million) indicated in a condition of “need” by the UN. Acled, a database specialized in conflict mapping, recorded 8 thousand victims in clashes between factions in Burkina Faso alone in 2023.