The women dug the graves in Barsalogho on August 26. Just like the day before. "They're almost the only ones left in the village. Almost all the men have been killed or wounded," said a resident, who lost eight members of her family on Saturday, August 24. On that day, Barsalogho was the scene of the deadliest jihadist attack in Burkina Faso's history.
Early in the morning, dozens of assailants machine-gunned hundreds of men who were digging a trench around their village on the orders of the ruling junta – a trench that was supposed to protect them from attacks that had become recurrent. Two videos taken by the attackers, seen by Le Monde, showed piles of bloodied men's bodies lying in the ditch, amid abandoned shovels and pickaxes. Around them, dozens of jihadists were firing. Some were executing the men on the ground who were trying to flee, at point-blank range.
According to security, humanitarian and local sources contacted by Le Monde, several hundred civilians were killed on Saturday in this attack, claimed by the Nusrat al-Islam, an Al-Qaeda affiliate. Video footage, which shows only one side of the trench, shows over 110 bodies. According to the organization Collectif Justice Pour Barsalgho, set up in the wake of the tragedy, there are "at least 400."
Beaten with belts
In a statement issued on Sunday, the collective, which refuses to reveal the identity of its members for fear of reprisal from the junta, confirmed what several sources had said earlier: In Barsalogho on Saturday, "the heads of the [military] detachment on site forced the people to take part in the construction work against their will, by threatening them."
In the days leading up to the attack, only a few civilians had agreed to help build the trench, located around 3 kilometers from the village, not far from Nusrat al-Islam positions. The terrorist group has been blockading the village for the past two years. Some people "went to see the military chief to ask him to organize the operation differently, warning him of the risk of attacks. But he did nothing, quite the opposite," explained the resident Le Monde spoke to. Two months earlier, 25 kilometers away, Nusrat al-Islam had executed 30 members of the Volontaires pour la Défense de la Patrie (VDP, army auxiliaries) who had also dug trenches in Noaka.
But faced with the people of Barsalogho, the military chief remained unmoved. At dawn on August 24, "soldiers entered the village to force people to come and dig. They beat those who refused with belts. The able-bodied members of each family went digging in fear, and were killed," insisted the resident. According to a survivor's testimony gathered by Le Monde and corroborated by other local and security sources, the soldiers and VDP, deployed to secure the works at the time of the assault, "fled and hid somewhere." A military helicopter arrived at around 4 pm, when the attackers had already left, to evacuate the wounded to the hospital in Kaya, 40 kilometers away.
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