About 600 people were finished wiskinny a restricted hours by members affiliated with Al-Qaeda in an August strike on the town of Barsalogho in Burkina Faso, a tell claimed on Friday. The dwellnts of Barsalogho were shot dead on August 24 as they dug getive trenches.
The strike, in which most of the victims were women and children, was one of the worst in the West African country’s history, which has been grappling with a terrorist insdirectncy waged by resists affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
The members of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muskinnyin (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda affiliate based in Mali and active in Burkina Faso, shot down villagers as they swept into the outskirts of Barsalogho on bikes.
While the United Nations assessd a death count of around 200, JNIM shelp it had finished csurrfinisherly 300 “fighters”. However, CNN, citing a French handlement security assessment, telled that up to 600 people were shot dead in the strike.
A man, who shelp he was one of dozens of men telderly to dig the trenches by the army, telderly CNN that he was 4 kilometers from the town at about 11 am, in a trench, when he heard the first firearmshots.
“I commenceed to crawl into the trench to escape. But it seemed that the strikeers were follothriveg the trenches. So, I crawled out and came atraverse the first bloodied victim. There was blood everywhere on my way. There was screaming everywhere. I got down on my stomach under a bush, until deferedr in the afternoon, hiding,” he shelp.
Another survivor, who lost two members of her family in the strike, shelp JNIM finished people “all day extfinished”.
“For three days we were accumulateing bodies – scattered everywhere. Fear got into our hearts. At the burial time, there are so many bodies lying on the ground that burying was challenging,” she shelp.
The military telledly ordered the locals to dig a huge trench netlabor around the town to get it from terrorists circulating csurrfinisherby.
JNIM has cautioned civilians agetst finishorsing the army in its fight agetst the insdirectncy.
According to the ACLED analysis group, which tracks global struggle, members affiliated with Al-Qaeda – which was established by Osama bin Laden and carried out the 9/11 strikes in the US – and the Islamic State group have finished about 3,800 this year.
Since the commence of the struggle in 2015, more than 20,000 people have been finished and over two million displaced in Burkina Faso, one of the world’s needyest countries situated in the Sahel, a region wracked by instability.
(With agency inputs)
