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Unidentified gunmen have killed at least 43 people in attacks on villages in northern Burkina Faso. The assailants targeted at least two villages in the northern region near the border with Mali.
Government reports said the attacks were carried out on the villages of Dinguila and Barga in Yatenga province on Sunday. The provisional toll is 43 victims.
The report added that the military was dispatched to secure the villages and at least six wounded victims were taken to the central hospital in nearby Ouahigouya. The statement, however, did not blame any group and no claim was immediately made for the raids.
The villages attacked are known to be populated by ethnic Fulani herdsmen, who have been targeted by local defence groups and the army for their alleged affiliation with armed groups.
Burkina Faso has battled against fighters with links to the al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) group since 2015. The conflict has also provoked attacks on Fulani herders who other communities accuse of supporting fighters.
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Since 2015, more than 800 people in Burkina Faso have been.
Deadliest Attack in Burkina Faso in the Past Year
Burkina Faso’s President Roch Kabore has condemned the attack and sent his condolences to the families of those killed. “I condemn with the greatest firmness the heinous attack,” he wrote on Twitter.
Tit-for-tat reprisal killings between the Fulani and rival farming communities have surged over the past year. In January, two attacks in northern Burkina Faso separately killed 36 and 39 people. The violence has forced more than half a million from their homes and made much of the north ungovernable.
Burkina Faso is in the centre of the Sahel region, where an armed uprising has spread from Mali. According to the United Nations, attacks in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso killed at least 4,000 people in 2019.
Al-Qaeda-linked fighters said they will only attend peace talks with Mali’s government if it expels French and UN forces.
