A public prosecutor has said that 170 people, including women and children, have been killed in attacks on three villages in Burkina Faso.
Aly Benjamin Coulibaly called for witnesses to help identify those who attacked Komsilga, Nordin and Soro.The army also warned of the increased risk of attacks by Islamists, “including attacks on urban centres”.The army took over the country in 2022, but insurgents control more than a third of Burkina Faso.Coulibaly said he had started an investigation into the village attacks in Yatenga province on 25 February.
The AFP news agency said that many women and children were among the dead.The attackers’ group was not known.The attacks were not thought to be linked to other recent violence – attacks on a church, a mosque and army bases – in other parts of the country.
On Friday, the army chief warned soldiers to be alert due to an increased risk of suicide attacks by militants.He also said there were “fears of a series of large-scale attacks” on security forces in cities.Humanitarian workers say Burkina Faso is one of the world’s most-ignored crises.
Years of widespread insecurity have forced more than two million people to leave their homes, and the UN says that a quarter of all children under five are stunted because of hunger.The military took power two years ago, saying they would defeat the rebels, but the violence goes on.
“The centre of terrorism has now clearly moved out of the Middle East and into the central Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa,” the Institute for Economics and Peace said earlier this week.
The Sahel covers Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger among other countries.
