Gunmen kill at least 160 in Burkina Faso’s deadliest attack in years
- The armed assailants also burned homes and a market in Sohlan village in Yagha province bordering Mali
- Since 2015 Burkina Faso has struggled to fight back against deadly attacks from jihadist groups
Suspected jihadists have massacred at least 160 civilians, including around 20 children, in Burkina Faso’s volatile north in the deadliest attacks since Islamist violence erupted in the west African country in 2015, officials said on Sunday.
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore denounced an attack near the borders with Mali and Niger, where jihadists linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State have been targeting civilians and soldiers.
In Solhan, local sources said they have recovered a total of 160 bodies from three mass graves.
“It’s the local people themselves who have started exhuming the bodies and burying them after transporting them,” one local source said.
“We must remain united and solid against these obscurantist forces,” Kabore said, condemning the massacre in the village of Solhan as “barbaric” and “despicable.”
The assailants struck around 2am (local time) against a position of the Volunteers for the Defence of the Motherland (VDP), an anti-jihadist civilian defence force which backs the national army, before attacking homes and carrying out “executions,” a local source said.