OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Atrocities are on the rise: a 25-year-old woman is abducted at dusk from her home, cornered and raped by one jihadist while another held her in the bathroom. Child infantrymen loot villages and women killed for identifying their attackers, their bodies left on the road.
These are some of the abuses committed in Burkina Faso by Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State documented in a report released Monday through Human Rights Watch.
As violence increases in the war-torn country, jihadists are raping and killing civilians and more and more child soldiers, the foreign rights organization said.
Civilians are also threatened with unlawful killings and enforced disappearances through security forces and allied militias involved in counterterrorism operations, according to the report.
“The speed of attacks and deterioration in Burkina Faso is as dramatic as it is worrying. People’s lives are shattered as violence increasingly invades parts of the country and threatens neighboring states,” said Corinne Dufka, West Africa director at Human Rights Watch. in the Associated Press.
Based on interviews with 83 survivors, witnesses and others between September and April, the report records dozens of rapes, many killings and the destruction of villages, in addition to the looting of gyms and the destruction of water and telecommunications infrastructure by extremists across the country. .
For six years, Burkina Faso has struggled to stop the developing jihadist insurgency that has killed thousands and displaced nearly 2 million people. attacks are intensifying and spreading.
Much of the recent violence is taking place in the north-central region, where jihadists have driven others from their homes. Dozens of women told Human Rights Watch that they were brutally raped while collecting firewood, going to or returning from the market, or fleeing attacks to their villages.
A 37-year-old woman said she hit 25 times and called a fake Muslim woman before raping her.
Many women want mental help but have not gotten any help from foreign aid organizations, according to the director of a local women’s organization who spoke on condition of anonymity for her safety.
Children, many between the ages of thirteen and 15, are also increasingly forced into fighters, used through jihadists to burn villages, protect captives and borrow from civilians, especially livestock, according to the report.
Last year, the AP documented one of the first visual uses of child infantrymen in the conflict, the fatal attack on the village of Solhan in Sahel province, where at least 160 other people were killed.
Government security forces are also accused of committing abuses in an attempt to stop the violence. Human Rights Watch documented 42 alleged abstract executions and 14 forced disappearances of civilians and suspected jihadist fighters through state security forces. Most of the victims were ethnic Peuhl, who are sometimes Muslim and have been increasingly targeted by the army and local defense militias on suspicion of being affiliated with Islamist groups, human rights organizations say.
According to the report, some of the alleged abuses occurred in the context of major counterterrorism operations. In January, another 22 people were killed and six kidnapped during a government air and ground offensive in the village of Yattakou in Sahel province of Seno, village leader Abdoul said. Kadry Ousmane told the AP. La Palestinian Authority cannot independently determine the allegations.
The government did not respond to requests for comment from the Palestinian Authority. However, in April, in response to allegations that more than a hundred civilians had been killed by security forces in the Sahel province of Oudalan, the army said it was carrying out all its missions with a “high awareness of respect for human rights” and would investigate the incident.
However, the United Nations says allegations of abuses in security operations are a concern, said Seif Magango, a spokesman for Africa at the U. N. Human Rights Office.
As violence intensifies on both sides, citizens are caught in the middle. In June, Azera Dopassn’s 16-year-old son was killed by jihadists while searching for water in his northern village. She buried him next to the space before fleeing to an impromptu displacement. Now the mother of 10 needs to stop by but says the scenario is too unpredictable.
“You hear that the jihadists are in the north, in the south or anywhere else and they tell you to go anywhere else,” Dopassn said. “It’s getting very difficult. . . No one knows what’s going on. “
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