Burkina Faso put civilians at 'unnecessary risk' during militant attack, rights group says

DAKAR, Senegal — Burkina Faso's government unnecessarily exposed civilians to danger during a militant attack earlier this year, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday.

In August, at least 100 villagers were killed by fighters from a militant group linked to al-Qaida in central Burkina Faso, in one of the deadliest attacks this year in the conflict-battered West African nation.

Villagers in the Barsalogho commune, which is 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the capital Ouagadougou, were forcibly helping security forces dig up trenches to protect security outposts and villages when fighters with the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin group invaded the area and opened fire on them, according to the report.

The JNIM group, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said that all of the villagers targeted were members of militias affiliated with Burkina Faso in its response to the report.

Human Rights Watch said it confirmed through video analysis and witness accounts that at least 133 people were killed, including dozens of children, and at least 200 more were injured.

“The massacre in Barsalogho is the latest example of atrocities by Islamist armed groups against civilians whom the government has put at unnecessary risk,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in the report.

About half of Burkina Faso is outside of government control as the country has been ravaged by increasing militant attacks, encircling the capital. The militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have killed thousands and displaced more than 2 million people.

The violence contributed to two coups in 2022. Still, the military junta that promised to end the attacks has struggled to do so, even after seeking new security partnerships with Russia and other junta-led, conflict-hit countries in Africa’s Sahel region.

The government's reliance on armed civilian auxiliaries, known as Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, or VDP, to fight militants is putting civilians in great danger, Allegrozzi told The Associated Press, as many become targets of jihadis who accuse them of being supporters or even members of the VDP.

Witnesses quoted in the report said Burkina Faso's military forced male residents to dig a new trench section near the village without providing payment but that many refused fearing they would be exposed to attacks. But soldiers coerced them to do the work by threatening and beating them.

The country's justice minister, Edasso Rodrigue Bayala, in his response to Human Rights Watch, said that forced labor was forbidden by law in Burkina Faso and that “testimonies according to which the military forced the populations to dig the trench are not proven.”