The violence once again plunges Burkina Faso into mourning and once again the results are terrible. About 60 civilians from a village in the north of the country were massacred on Thursday by men in army uniform, the prosecutor of the Ouahigouya high court, Lamine Kaboré, announced on Sunday.
He writes in a press release that he was informed by the city’s gendarmerie “that in the village of Karma”, located in the province of Yatenga, “about sixty people were killed by people wearing uniforms from our national armed forces”. . “The wounded have been evacuated and are currently being taken care of within our health structures”, he adds, specifying that “the perpetrators of these facts would have taken away various goods”.
A village that attracts many artisanal gold miners
According to residents, survivors said that “more than a hundred people on motorcycles and pick-ups raided Karma last Thursday. Dozens of men and young people were executed by these men dressed in military uniforms”. These survivors spoke of a death toll “around 80 dead”. This village is about forty kilometers from that of Aorema near the Malian border and attracts many illegal gold miners.
Burkina Faso, the scene of two military coups in 2022, has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of jihadist violence that appeared in Mali and Niger a few years earlier and which has spread beyond their borders. The violence has claimed more than 10,000 lives over the past seven years – civilians and soldiers – according to NGOs, and some two million displaced.
A new decree to fight against jihadists
The transitional president, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power by a putsch in September 2022, signed on Wednesday a decree of “general mobilization” for a period of one year, allowing if necessary the requisition of “young people aged 18 and more” to go and fight against the jihadists who are bloodying the country.