Saturday 5th June 2021
State mourning after the village massacre
Gunmen kill more than 100 Burkinabe
Terrible news is being heard from Burkina Faso month after month. At least 100 villagers are killed on Saturday night. It is the most fatal attack in years.
More than 100 people were killed in a raid in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The “barbaric attack” occurred in the night from Friday to Saturday, announced the president Roch Kabore on Facebook. Armed men attacked the village of Solhan in the northern Sahel region, it said. It is the most fatal attack in years.
According to the state news agency AIB, the people were literally “executed”. Accordingly, the attackers are also said to have set buildings and the market on fire. The number of victims could also continue to rise, reported AIB.
He had ordered a three-day state mourning, said Kabore. Security forces are already on the way to track down the perpetrators of the “shameful” act and to “incapacitate” them. There was no further information about the identity and motive of the perpetrators.
It often hits villagers
Burkina Faso is located in the Sahel – an area that stretches south of the Sahara from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Armed groups are active there, some of which have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State or Al Qaeda. Burkina Faso was spared attacks for a long time, but their number has increased significantly since 2015. Violent acts and assaults with many fatalities occur regularly in the country with around 20 million inhabitants.
At least 15 people were killed in a baptism attack in mid-May. The attack also took place in a village in the northern Sahel region. The motive and the identity of the attackers were initially unclear.
At least 30 people were killed in a village in Komandjari province in early May. At the time, a resident described that around 100 Islamic extremists had come to the village on motorcycles and pick-ups. At the end of April, two Spaniards and an Irishman were killed in an attack on a military convoy, presumably by jihadists. According to the United Nations, more than 1.2 million people from Burkina Faso are now on the run in their own country.
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