HRW links the Burkinabe Army to the massacre of more than 150 people in northern Burkina Faso

May 4. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has linked this Thursday the Army of Burkina Faso with a massacre of more than 150 people committed on April 20 in various towns located in the North region and has called for an “independent and impartial” investigation. about what happened.

HRW has indicated that those responsible, presumably members of the Burkinabe Army, killed 83 men, 28 women and 45 children, in addition to setting fire to homes and looting properties in the town of Karma and its surroundings in apparent response to an attack perpetrated days earlier in the zone.

Karma is located in an area where groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State operate, and just five days earlier six soldiers and at least 34 “volunteers” were killed in an attack launched by suspected jihadists against a nearby town.

A Burkinabe prosecutor blamed the attack on “men dressed in military uniforms” and announced the opening of an investigation, while Communications Minister Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo condemned the incident and said the authorities “will do everything in their power to clarify the whole truth of this dramatic event”.

“The Burkina Faso authorities have condemned the massacre in Karma and said there will be an investigation, but for the victims and relatives of these heinous murders to achieve justice, the international community must ensure that the promised investigation is credible, independent and that all those responsible are brought to justice, said the deputy director of HRW for Africa, Carine Kaneza Nantulya.

The NGO has interviewed fourteen people, including six witnesses, and has analyzed more than a hundred photographs taken in Karma after the massacre and has highlighted that the survivors have recounted that it took place during a military operation that lasted six hours.

Thus, they have stated that hundreds of Burkinabe soldiers arrived in the town on April 20 in trucks and armored vehicles, after which they went door to door to concentrate the villagers in various groups, against whom they opened fire, in apparent retaliation for a previous attack.

“The soldiers told us to sit down,” said a 40-year-old resident. “In my group we were more than 30. Suddenly, they started shooting,” he said, before detailing that he played dead to try to survive.

“I was lying face down after the first shot, wet from the blood of other bodies. I stayed still, scared, until the soldiers left. Two of them returned to finish off those who were moving and were still alive,” he highlighted. .

Likewise, three residents of the town have assured that they saw members of a Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) – a special force involved in anti-jihadist operations – in a convoy that went to Karma that day. “I saw BIR 3 in their uniforms,” ​​one of them pointed out.

Kaneza Nantulya stressed that “the Karma massacre will be even more devastating if the Burkinabe authorities do not keep their promise to ensure that the investigation is thorough, independent and leads to impartial prosecutions.” “Given the seriousness of these crimes, the government should seek cooperation and assistance from the African Union (AU) and the United Nations to carry out the investigation,” she said.

The Burkinabe authorities recently decreed a general mobilization to deal with the increase in jihadist attacks, the work of both the Al Qaeda affiliate and the Islamic State. The rise in insecurity has caused a wave of internally displaced persons and refugees to other countries in the region.