Unidentified assailants killed at least 43 people in raids
on villages in northern Burkina Faso on Sunday, in one of the deadliest such
attacks of the past year, the government said.
The
attackers struck at least two villages inhabited by Fulani herders in the North
region, near the border with Mali, the government said in a statement on
Monday.
No claim was
immediately made for the attack, but tit-for-tat reprisal killings between the
Fulani and rival farming communities have surged over the past year across
Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, compounding violence by jihadist groups with
links to al Qaeda and Islamic State.
The violence
killed hundreds of civilians last year across the Sahel, a semi-arid strip of
land beneath the Sahara Desert, alarming Western powers who have poured money
and troops to combat the Islamist groups. It comes as the United States
considers a drawdown of troops in the region.
Corinne
Dufka, West Africa director for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said
Sunday’s attack was one of six incidents in northern Burkina Faso since the
start of the year that the organization is investigating in which vigilante
fighters allegedly killed civilians or suspected jihadists.
A government
spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President
Roch Marc Kabore signed a law earlier this year providing support to local
vigilantes, including two weeks of military training, unspecified equipment,
healthcare and bonus payments.
Even before
the law was adopted, there were an estimated 40,000 vigilante groups called
koglweogo - “guardians of the bush” in the Moore language - that have sprouted
up in response to instability across the country.
Some of them
have faced allegations they massacred civilians - charges they deny.
Last year was Burkina
Faso’s deadliest in recent memory, and the violence has continued unabated this
year. Two attacks in northern Burkina Faso in January killed 36 and 39 people,
respectively, and gunmen killed 24 people in an attack on a church in February.
The violence has forced more than half a million from their homes and made much of the north ungovernable. - Reuters
The violence has forced more than half a million from their homes and made much of the north ungovernable. - Reuters
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