2024 Barsalogho attack | |
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Part of Jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso | |
Location | Barsalogho, Barsalogho Department, Burkina Faso |
Coordinates | 13°24′54″N1°3′23″W / 13.41500°N 1.05639°W |
Date | 24 August 2024 |
Target | Burkinabè soldiers and civilians |
Attack type | Gunfire |
Deaths | 400–500+ [1] |
Injured | 300+ [2] |
Perpetrator | Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin |
An attack on 24 August 2024 by Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) terrorists, an al-Qaeda-linked jihadist organization, killed hundreds of soldiers of the Burkina Faso Armed Forces, as well as civilians who were digging defensive trenches [3] in the Barsalogho Department of northern Burkina Faso. The attack is part of an ongoing jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso and the Sahel. [4] [1] It is the deadliest attack in the country's history. [5]
Since August 2015, a civil conflict between the Government of Burkina Faso and Islamist rebels has killed at least 10,000 civilians and combatants and displaced more than 2 million people. Almost half of Burkina Faso's territory is in the hands of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists. [4] The war is part of the wider insurgency in the Sahel. [6] [7] [8]
In August 2024, jihadists began to close in on the Barsalogho Department city of Kaya, which represented the last defensive line between the terrorists and Burkina Faso's capital of Ouagadougou. In anticipation of an attack, the Burkina Faso Armed Forces recruited nearby residents to dig defensive trenches around the town of Barsalogho, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the north of Kaya. [4]
On 24 August 2024, from 09:00 to 16:00, [2] a group of JNIM terrorists opened fire on soldiers and townspeople who were digging defensive trenches for the army and the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP) [3] —a civilian armed group that supports the Burkinabe military. [9] Several dozen people were killed, while many wounded people were taken to a hospital in Kaya. Most of the victims were young residents of the town who helped soldiers dig trenches. [10] Local officials and members of the VDP were also among the casualties. [9] The attackers captured several weapons and an ambulance used by the Burkinabe military. [4] On 27 August, sources told Reuters that the attack had likely killed at least 400 or 500 people. [1] Burkinabe soldiers, auxiliaries, and air support responded to the attack, reportedly killing several terrorists and limiting further Burkinabe casualties. [9] [10]
After the attack, JNIM released several videos of the bodies of those killed. [4] The group's leader, Iyad Ag Ghaly, claimed that it had taken control of a militia headquarters in Barsalogho. [11] The JNIM killed people in the trenches where they were digging in an effort to turn them into mass graves, and claimed that the army ordered civilians to dig military trenches in an apparent act of desperation to counter the jihadists' advances. [4]
Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin is a militant jihadist organisation in the Maghreb and West Africa formed by the merger of Ansar Dine, the Macina Liberation Front, al-Mourabitoun and the Saharan branch of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Its leaders swore allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri.
On 4 and 5 June 2021, insurgents attacked the Solhan and Tadaryat villages in the Yagha Province of Burkina Faso. The massacres left at least 174 people dead. Insurgents have been attacking the Sahel Region, along the border with Mali, since Islamists captured parts of Mali in 2013.
An ongoing war and civil conflict between the Government of Burkina Faso and Islamist rebels began in August 2015 and has led to the displacement of over 2 million people and the deaths of at least 10,000 civilians and combatants.
An Islamist insurgency has been ongoing in the Sahel region of West Africa since the 2011 Arab Spring. In particular, the intensive conflict in the three countries of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso has been referred to as the Sahel War.
The siege of Djibo is an ongoing blockade of the city of Djibo in Burkina Faso by several factions of Jihadist Islamist rebels. The siege began in February 2022, and is part of the Jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso.
On the night between December 31, 2018, and January 1, 2019, alleged Ansarul Islam jihadists attacked the village of Yirgou, in Barsalogho Department, Burkina Faso. While initial reports claimed the attack killed six people, including the village chief and his son, later reports and investigations showed up to 210 people were killed.
On January 10, 2019, Ansarul Islam militants killed 20 civilians in Gasseliki, Burkina Faso. The attack came in the wake of a massacre perpetrated by the Koglweogo in Yirgou, in Barsalogho department, just days earlier.
On April 8, 2022, unknown jihadists ambushed a Burkinabe military base near the town of Namissiguima, in Sanmatenga Province, Burkina Faso.
On December 7, 2022, ten Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland militants, a Burkinabe civilian militia, were killed at a market in Boala Department, Centre-Nord Region, Burkina Faso. A second attack on December 10 killed seven civilians.
On 21 March 2021, armed jihadists from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara attacked the villages of Intazayane, Bakorat, Wirsnat, and several other hamlets and camps around Tillia, Tahoua Region, Niger. The attacks killed 141 people, mostly civilians, and injured several others.
On October 29, 2022, gunmen from Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin ambushed a convoy of Burkinabé soldiers near the village of Kikideni while they were on their way from Fada N'gourma to Natiaboani, Est Region, Burkina Faso.
On January 12 and 13, 2023, jihadists kidnapped sixty-six people in two separate incidents near Arbinda, Burkina Faso. The abducted civilians were eventually freed by the Burkinabe military on January 20. The kidnappings were the first of their kind to target women during the insurgency.
On January 11, 2023, unknown jihadists killed nine civilians at a mosque in Goulgountou, Burkina Faso.
On January 28, 2023, suspected Islamic State jihadists attacked Burkinabe soldiers and Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP) militiamen in the city of Falagountou, Burkina Faso.
On January 28, 2023, suspected Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin militants stopped two buses headed from Banfora to Mangodara near the village of Linguekoro, Comoé Province, Burkina Faso, and killed fifteen passengers.
On May 30, 2020, unknown militants ambushed an aid convoy escorted by Burkinabe gendarmes near the town of Barsalogho as it was returning from delivering food to civilians in Sanmatenga Province, Burkina Faso. Thirteen people were killed and forty others were wounded in the attack.
Amadou Boucary, nom de guerre Djaffar Dicko and Yéro, is a Burkinabe jihadist who has served as the leader of Ansarul Islam since 2017.
The JNIM-ISGS war is an ongoing armed conflict between Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State – Sahil Province (ISGS), the Sahelian branches of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State respectively, and, to some extent, Islamic State – Algeria Province (ISAP). Since ISGS' formation in October 2016 and the creation of the JNIM coalition in 2017, the two groups had been described as the Sahelien exception or Sahelien anomaly: despite the global war between al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates since the latter's splinter from the former in 2014, both ISGS and JNIM have ignored each other and in rare cases worked together against Malian, Nigerien, Burkinabe, French, and international governments and non-Islamist militias until 2020.