A prosecutor says that about 60 people were killed in an attack in northern Burkina Faso.

People wearing the uniforms of the Burkinabe armed forces killed around 60 citizens on Friday in northern Burkina Faso, a local prosecutor said on Sunday. He got this information from police in the town of Ouahigouya.

He said that a probe had been started after the attack on the village of Karma in Yatenga province, which is near the border with Mali. This is an area where militant groups with ties to al-Qaeda and Daesh have been attacking repeatedly for years.

The statement didn’t say anything else about the crime.

—AFP —AFP
Human Rights Watch said in March that since 2022, the number of attacks by armed groups on citizens has gone up. At the same time, state security forces and volunteer defence troops have carried out a number of abusive counter-terrorism operations.

The government says that on April 15, unknown attackers attacked the army and volunteer forces in the same area of northern Burkina Faso near Ouahigouya. They killed 40 people and hurt 33 others.

In 2012, gunmen in Mali took over a Tuareg rebel uprising and caused trouble in the area. Since then, the violence has spread to Burkina Faso and Niger, killing thousands of people and forcing more than 2.5 million to leave their homes.