Up to 600 people were shot dead in a matter of hours by Al-Qaeda-linked militants in an August attack on a town in Burkina Faso, according to a French government security assessment, refuting the initial United Nations assessment of 200.
Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda affiliate based in Mali, opened fire from motorcycles and shot villagers in Barsalogho who lay in the trench, according to several videos posted by pro-JNIM accounts on social media.
Civilians were shot dead as they dug trenches to defend the remote town of Barsalogho. The military ordered locals to dig the vast trench network to protect the town from jihadists. The JNIM gunmen claimed the civilians were combatants because of their involvement.
Many women and children were killed, and footage taken by the JNIM is punctuated by the sound of automatic gunfire and screams of victims as they are shot while apparently trying to play dead.
One survivor, who asked for anonymity, said he was one of dozens of men told to dig the trenches. “ I started to crawl into the trench to escape, but it seemed that the attackers were following the trenches. So, I crawled out and came across the first bloodied victim. There was actually blood everywhere on my way. There was screaming everywhere. I got down on my stomach under a bush, until later in the afternoon, hiding.”
The massacre led to angry protests in which Burkina Faso’s junta leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who seized power in the second of two successive military coups in 2022, was derided as “IB Captain Zero” for endorsing the construction of the trenches by civilians.
The French security assessment says the violence in Burkina Faso has begun to spill over into Togo.