OUAHIGOUYA: About 60 civilians have been killed in a village in northern Burkina Faso, according to a local prosecutor who announced a probe into the attack.
The incident occurred on Friday in the village of Karma near the Malian border, prosecutor Lamine Kabore said late Sunday citing information from police.
He said the perpetrators were dressed in uniforms of the Burkinabe armed forces, but gave no further details on the attack.
The injured have been evacuated and are currently being taken care of within our health facilities, Kabore told the AFP news agency, adding that the assailants took away various goods.
According to residents contacted by AFP, survivors said over 100 people on motorbikes and pickup trucks attacked the village. Putting the death toll at “around 80”, they said men dressed in military uniforms killed dozens of people.
About 40 percent of Burkina Faso is thought to be under the control of armed groups following regional unrest that began in Mali in 2012 when hardline groups hijacked a Tuareg separatist uprising. The country’s military rulers this month announced a “general mobilisation” in a bid to regain territory lost to armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).
Last week, 34 defence volunteers and six soldiers were killed in a raid by an “unidentified” group near Aorema village, about 40km from Karma.
The conflict has so far claimed over 10,000 lives according to aid groups, with some two million forced to flee their homes.
Anger within the military at the rising toll led to two coups in 2022, the most recent in September, when Captain Ibrahim Traore became president.
Traore says he is committed to fulfil a plan by the preceding military administration to hold elections for a civilian government by 2024.
