The Burkina Faso News has shown that Solhan’s massacre has not dealt with the Sahel crisis

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso – Fatimata Lankoande was asleep in her house when she was awakened by a gunshot.

“Everyone was scared and terrified,” the 63-year-old said. “People were running around.”

Lankoand said the armed attackers arrived on the night of June 4-5 with more than three cars and 30 motorcycles. The first workers were attacked in Solhan, an informal gold mine in a village in northern Burkina Faso. Later, they entered the village market, burning shops and houses, while the massacre continued.

“They started killing what he knew,” said Lankoand, who has since fled to the nearest town to Dori.

He said some aspects of what he saw were too painful to tell.

“It’s been the hardest moment I’ve experienced in my entire life,” Lankoande said. “I know seven of the victims. They were young men … [The attackers] they were very numerous and when they entered the market they also killed women … and burned our hospital. “

-The scale of June 4 to 5 massacre in Solhan he has sent shockwaves almost every day from a country that sees deadly attacks. With dozens of men, women and children killed, Burkina Faso is the only deadly attack in 2015 since the escalation of the conflict that spread to the West African region of West Africa.

The official death toll given by the government is 132, but several news outlets citing credible local sources have reported that the number has risen to 160.

An aide who knew Solhan’s condition said: “We understand that most of the bodies are buried, so it’s very difficult to set exact figures now.”

A witness after the attack and burial told Al Jazeera that all the bodies are buried and said they are larger than the 132 numbers.

Regardless of the imbalance, the number of deaths by armed groups in Burkina Faso since the beginning of the year has risen to more than 500.

Heni Nsaibia, an analyst at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project that controls the attacks in Burkina Faso, said Solhan’s massacre was not shown to improve security across the Sahel despite thousands of international and regional troops.

He also turned to neighboring Niger, where the number of civilian deaths in the first two months of 2021 exceeded the number of deaths by armed groups “any previous year”.

French, American and European troops have spent years concentrating their efforts on a three-border region where the borders of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet.

Nsaibia acknowledged that there has been “some progress” in this area, but said that “this excessive focus on the border of the three states [region] the jihadist group tends to ignore other areas that are increasingly entrenched or expanding their operations. “

No armed group, the two largest operators in the region – Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara (ISGS) – have claimed responsibility for the Solhan massacre. On Tuesday, JNIM released a statement denying that they were responsible and condemned the attack.

“Even if JNIM officially refuses to participate, there are long JNIM suspects that the fighters may have been attacked, “said Al Jazeera’s Alex Thurston, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati and an expert on armed groups in the Sahel.

“This possibility raises doubts as to whether central management has full control over all units,” he said.

Damaged buildings and huts at the scene of the attack [[Burkina Faso Prime Minister’s Press Service/Handout/Reuters]

After Solhan’s attack, the streets of the capital Ouagadougou took on a reserved tone as the government declared three days of national mourning.

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who won the election again last year, denounced the “savage” and “despicable” massacre and called for unity “against these dark forces”.

Armed groups linked to ISIL and al-Qaeda have overrun large parts of northern and eastern Burkina Faso, and many see it as the epicenter of the region’s widespread conflict.

Asked about the importance of the Solhan attack, Thurston said: “Many actors in the Sahel conflict are using savagery to gain control over civilians, but the main effect is to split the overall crisis and make it more violent.”

Analysts and rights groups say the attack came from members of the Homeland Defense Volunteers (VDP), a government-backed civilian militia that is helping to fight armed groups.

A few days after the massacre, Burkinabe analyst Siaka Coulibally told Al Jazeera that “it is still difficult to find an official or rational explanation for the attack.”

“But initial explanations often suggest that attacks on VDP continue,” Coulibally said. “In the east, entire villages were destroyed and their populations killed because these villages were the original villages of the VDP and their families.”

The attack targeted an informal gold mining site, one of about 700 to 1,000 in Burkina Faso. Fighters are known for their pains with the goal of making money. The government has called for a halt to gold mining in Yagha district, which was attacked last week.

Yagha authorities have also imposed a ban on the use of motorcycles, a means of transport in favor of the fighters. The tactics previously used by Nigeria in its fight against the Boko Haram armed group are intended to make it easier for security forces to identify suspects.

The humanitarian impact of the Solhan attack has also been significant, adding to the snowstorm crisis that caused the internal displacement of 1.2 million people.

“Over 3,300 people are afraid of life he fled to the nearby villages of Sebba and Sampelga, including more than 2,000 children and more than 500 women, ”reads the United Nations Refugee Agency.

“They arrived with little or nothing. The majority have been generously received by local families, who are sharing what little they have. “