Gruesome details have emerged of Saturday’s massacre in central-northern Burkina Faso where hundreds of people were killed by jihadists while digging trenches around the town of Barsalogho, a commune in the province of Sanmatenga in north-central Burkina Faso. In a phone call on Tuesday, a source told Reuters that Burkinabe troops had forced the residents of Barsalogho, despite their opposition, to stop their daily activities to dig trenches around the town in an attempt to avoid attacks by the jihadists. Hundreds of people were working outside at the time of the attack, the source said, based on accounts from the wounded. “They could do nothing but lie on top of each other. It was a real massacre,” the source said, adding that the gunmen also attacked women who were busy collecting firewood nearby. Hundreds of the wounded were taken to medical facilities in the town of Kaya, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the south. A witness, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, told Reuters that the number of victims, including the dead and wounded, could exceed 500. While celebrating and singing “Allah u Akbar”, the executioners lodged several bullets in the skulls of men who were probably already dead and the military arrived on the scene only five hours after the massacre. Numerous videos released following the massacre, in particular by the JNIM, confirm in any case that the victims were overwhelmingly civilians. The images show dozens of bodies lying in the trench. Men, dressed in civilian clothes and surrounded by shovels and pickaxes. Filmed over several dozen meters, the trench did not reveal the presence of weapons near the people killed. In another video clip of just under three minutes, an attacker films what appears to be the end of the attack. Dozens of bodies are already on the ground, surrounded by fighters, on foot or on motorcycles.
The massacre was claimed by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM or JNIM), al-Qaeda’s Sahel branch. Under jihadist blockade since 2022, the town of Barsalogho had already been targeted about thirty times by radical Islamist groups. Located just 45 km from Kaya, where the head of the coup-plotting military junta Ibrahim Traoré was head of artillery, it is considered “the last bastion” before a north once controlled by the military that is now firmly in the hands of jihadists. The attack, which lasted about two hours, is among the deadliest since groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State began operating in Burkina Faso from neighboring Mali about a decade ago, plunging the Sahel country into a security crisis that contributed to two coups in 2022.
Four ministers and the army chief of staff went to meet the victims in Kaya, where most of the wounded were evacuated, about 45 kilometers from the village of Barsalogho where the attack took place. On national television, the Minister of Communications, Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo, spoke of “a cowardly and barbaric attack perpetrated by hordes of criminals who attacked women, children, the elderly and men, without distinction.” A security source said that “the response of the soldiers and the VDP made it possible to neutralize several terrorists and avoid a greater tragedy” but the population is furious about the coup plot for months and does not admit the gravity of the situation.
Since 2015, the country has been regularly hit by attacks by jihadist groups that have resulted in more than 20,000 deaths – civilians and soldiers – including nearly 3,800 this year, according to the NGO Acled which lists victims of conflicts around the world. The UN and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly accused Burkinabe security forces and the VDP of committing massacres against civilians. The head of the Burkinabe regime, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power in a coup in September 2022, had promised to make the fight against terrorism his government priority and for this reason, after breaking with France, he linked himself to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. A contingent of 100 Russian soldiers landed in Burkina Faso at the end of January, and 200 more men are expected to join them in the future. The arrivals are part of the Africa Corps, a force recently created by the Russian Defense Ministry to replace the Wagner Group, which was disbanded last year. Meanwhile, there are rumors of ongoing negotiations to establish a Russian military base in the Central African Republic (CAR). The arrival of the Russian contingent in Burkina Faso represents both an expansion and a formalization of the Kremlin’s military presence in the Sahel; the establishment of a military base in the CAR will also contribute to this goal. The Corps’ deployment was preceded by several visits by Yevkurov to Africa and the reopening of the Russian embassy in Ouagadougou, after more than 30 years of closure. Russia’s expansion in Africa is filling the security vacuum left by the withdrawal of French forces from most Sahel countries and the CAR. The military juntas that have seized power in several Sahel states in recent years see Russia as an ally both domestically and internationally and are eager to collaborate with it in the defense sector. While the Africa Corps claims to want to assist in the fight against jihadism where it has so far failed utterly, its presence on the continent will primarily aim to strengthen the Kremlin’s military, political and economic influence.
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