Both cities are in a region hit hard by terrorist attacks and strategically important as it borders Mali and Niger, which are also victims of fundamentalist violence with skewed Islamic affiliations, observers recall.
It may lack humanism to quantitatively compare what happened in Solhan in June 2021, when an attack on that mining village claimed more than 160 lives, to what happened now in Seytenga, where 86 deaths were reported, but the Numbers show how cruelty continues.
That attack happened on Saturday about 40 kilometers from Dori, the capital of the Sahel region, near the border with Niger, and is estimated to have caused as many as 8,300 displaced people, most of them minors, according to the government’s National Council of Emergencies and Rehabilitation (Conasur).
The completion of investigations by security agencies and victim-tracing groups was announced on Thursday, after the ruling military junta gave assurances that the massacre would not go unpunished and for which three days of national mourning were observed.
For its part, the opposition People’s Movement for Progress (MPP), the party of former President Mark Christian Roch Kaboré, who was ousted by the military in January, estimated that 150 citizens were killed in the attack, without giving details of the wounded and displaced.
The northern region of Burkina Faso is part of the so-called zone of three borders because it borders Mali and Niger, countries with which it shares insecurity in the face of terrorist attacks, which also means that forced emigration makes the problem a Sahel problem power .
According to political opposition groups, the attack on the Seytenga neighborhood was preceded by an attack on the Territorial Gendarmerie Brigade, which killed 11 agents.
The terrorists entered the city on the night of June 11-12 and attacked civilians, said Wendkouni Joel Lionel Bilgo, a government spokesman.
More than 3,170 people, including 2,173 children, were displaced by armed attacks in Seytenga and Titabe municipalities on Sunday, reported the Directorate of Humanitarian Actions, an NGO based in the northeastern city of Dori.
“We will do everything we can to find them and ask them to pay,” said Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, head of the military junta, who reiterated his call for the population to work with all security forces to achieve a full success as well he promised to ensure the speedy return of the residents to Seytenga.
In this context, however, the MPP questioned the anti-terror strategy implemented by the leader of the political transition opened in Burkina Faso after the coup against Roch Kaboré, although it called for national unity to face the violent offensive of the extremists to oppose departments.
“Like all Burkinabes, we wonder how it is possible that terrorists can commit such barbarism in such a strategic area for several hours without hesitation,” the movement said in a statement, in which it also warned that a terrorist attack would bring down several cities. .
The movement called for an urgent mobilization of its members and all patriots to win the war on terrorism and return to constitutional order as soon as possible, added the message signed by party leader Alassane Bala Sakande.
However, several survivors told the Francophone press: “The security forces packed up and left,” they said, describing how they stood alone in front of the attackers, took up positions and fired on the villagers, even opening the doors of the houses to do it.
Such aggression could be related to a retaliatory strike against government forces who had recently reported the deaths of 40 terrorists during an operation. Seytenga is the second deadliest attack in the country after last year’s attack on the village of Solhan.
Burkina Faso has suffered an escalation in violence since 2015, as armed groups with a distorted Islamic sect spread into areas in the north and center of the country, which appear to be having a greater impact on national destabilization than the January coup.
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