Burkina Faso’s government has declared that it will adopt a new strategy in the battle against terrorism in an effort to lower the number of fatalities in the nation’s wars.
According to Africanews, the prosecutor of the court of Ouahigouya, Lamine Kaboré, wrote in a statement sent to AFP to have been informed by the gendarmerie of the city “that in the village of Karma”, located in the province of Yatenga, “about sixty people would have been killed by people wearing uniforms of our national armed forces.”
“The wounded were evacuated and are currently being treated in our health facilities,” he added, adding that “the perpetrators of these acts have taken various goods.
The prosecutor said that “seized of these facts whose seriousness is proven”, he had “given the necessary instructions (…) in order to elucidate them and to arrest all those involved”.
He called on “all those who have information about these events” to “report them”.
Survivors claimed that “more than a hundred people on motorbikes and pickup trucks raided Karma last Thursday,” according to locals contacted by AFP. These individuals in military garb killed dozens of men and young people. According to these survivors, “close to 80” people have died.
The massacre occurred a week after an attack by alleged jihadists near the town of Aorema, located approximately 15 kilometres from Ouahigouya, resulted in the deaths of six troops and 34 Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland (VDP).
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The town of Karma, which is close to the Malian border and 40 miles from Aorema, is a popular destination for unauthorised gold miners.
Early in April, the military justice system of Burkina Faso declared that it would launch an investigation to provide “all possible light” into the deaths of numerous people in Dori, also in the north of the nation, amid “serious altercations” with soldiers.
Abrahamane Mande, the town’s prefect, claimed that soldiers had shot automatic guns at civilians and injured them, “causing loss of life and injuries among the population.”
Residents of Dori claimed that it was a “punitive expedition” by soldiers following the killing of a soldier, and the Burkinabe Movement for Human and People’s Rights (MBDHP) supported their claims.
Two military takeovers were place in Burkina Faso in 2022, and since 2015, the country has been ensnared in a wave of Islamist violence that started in Mali and Niger and has now extended throughout other countries.
According to NGOs, the violence has resulted in the deaths of over 10,000 civilians and military over the previous seven years, as well as the displacement of almost two million people.
A one-year “general mobilisation” edict was signed on Wednesday by the interim president of Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traore, who took office in a coup in September 2022. This decree permits the requisition of “young people aged 18 and over” to combat the jihadists who are ravaging the nation.
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