Barsalogho massacre: Jihadist violence on the rise in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger

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00:00Now it's been 10 days since one of the worst massacres in the history of Burkina Faso.

00:04On the 24th of August, al-Qaeda militants gunned down around 200 residents of a central town in

00:11the country. It appears to be the deadliest single attack in the West African nation

00:16since groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group first spread from neighbouring Mali

00:22in 2015. Well Waseem Nasser is our terrorism expert, he's been looking into this story,

00:27he's with me now. Look Waseem, I know you have some new information about what happened,

00:32tell us about that and tell us more broadly as well about the security situation in Burkina Faso.

00:38Well actually we got the footage and we're going to see part of it about the moment when the al-Qaeda

00:44jihadist attacked those residents of Barcelona and we see that they are wearing civilian clothes

00:49and they only have shovels and their shoes next to their bodies and we see that what they were

00:56digging isn't that military efficient. So after talking to people on the ground we understood that

01:02the army forced those inhabitants of Barcelona to dig those trenches around the town like three

01:08kilometres away from the town without any protection and actually residents of Barcelona are

01:14blaming the army for this outcome. Al-Qaeda claimed 300 killed, question asked to al-Qaeda

01:19militants, they said that as long as they are digging the trenches for the military they are

01:23considered as militiamen and so they are they are between brackets allowed to to kill them.

01:29The situation in Burkina Faso is degrading by the day, we have a map where we see the latest attack

01:33and the most important attacks for the months of August and we see Barcelona among them and

01:39we see Saitanga where the Islamic State and al-Qaeda jihadists confronted each other, they had

01:4510 of deaths from both sides and we have the Nasugu attack, we have footage of this attack

01:50where a huge convoy of the army and of civilians was stopped next to the town of Nasugu and

01:57here is the footage while they were trying to enter two villages and a gold mine and we see

02:04that the convoy was dismantled and we see that here we see an Egyptian made a military equipment

02:15that was given to the Burkina Faso army a few years back. We also have figures of the latest

02:23death figures in Burkina Faso from 2018 till the month of August 2024 and it is very telling and

02:31as you see the death toll goes huge after the coups, the both coups of Damibah and Traoré.

02:38Okay so clearly a serious situation in Burkina Faso, tell us though about the reach of groups

02:43like al-Qaeda more broadly in this region, I'm thinking of course of Mali but also Niger, Benin,

02:50is their influence growing there? Well their influence is constant, we are seeing less attacks

02:55in Mali because they are at home if I may say so, we have footage of one of the latest attacks in

03:00Gossi on the 28th of August and here it is, it's the entrance of the town of Gossi in Mali,

03:08we have another footage filmed at night next to Nyoro, the entrance of Nyoro which is also an

03:14important town in Mali on the border with Mauritania and we have most importantly a

03:18footage from Yelimani where we see the jihadis entering military barracks, here it is, and roaming

03:24in the town without being stopped by the army or anyone else and this is next to the Mauritanian

03:30border but also not far away from Senegal. We also have a picture also of an attack by the

03:35Islamic State militants in Tabango which is the town, and here it is, which is the town of the

03:39prime minister of Mali actually, Shogel Maiga, and here 20 Malian military got killed

03:46during this attack. In Niger, we were speaking about Niger, so in Niger the latest attacks of

03:52al-Qaeda was on the 26th of August, it was on the border with Burkina Faso and the latest attacks

03:58of the Islamic State in Niger was on the border with Nigeria, in Maina Sawere where eight NGO

04:04workers were killed by Islamic State militants and here also is the attack of Tabango and we see that

04:11this four-wheel car actually was given to the Malian military by French special forces,

04:17this is very specific to Toyotas, and we have to see, you can see also a map of developing

04:23jihadi activity in the Sahel as a whole, and here it is, what you see in yellow is al-Qaeda,

04:28what you see in green is the Islamic State, what you see in grey is confrontation zones between the

04:34two groups or cohabitation zones between the two groups, and you see how it's spreading into

04:39Benin, where we see that al-Qaeda succeeded in duplicating what it did in Burkina Faso,

04:44in Benin, meaning growing representatives in this country who are being able to recruit themselves

04:51like Sheikh al-Albani, and a few minutes ago, before I entered the studio, there was a new

04:57communique from al-Qaeda in Burkina Faso done by the person who is responsible for spreading al-Qaeda

05:03from Burkina Faso to Benin and to Togo, and it's interesting also to see that one of the most

05:11important figures of al-Qaeda, Sidan Aghita, issued also a communique for the first time,

05:16so here he is, he's like the right hand of Iyad Aghali, the head of the group, and he targeted

05:23especially juntas in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, but also Russia for Wagner implication,

05:29you have footage of him during the fight against Wagner in Tinswaten on the 27th of July,

05:35but also he targeted Turkey, because Turkey provides drone capacity for juntas in all

05:42three countries. And earlier you showed us a graphic of the death toll in Burkina Faso,

05:48West Sea, but I know you have another graphic you want to show us finally, and this shows the

05:53number of people who've been killed across the region, this is in the last six years. Exactly,

05:58and it is, it doesn't need words to explain it, just telling by itself, you see the numbers,

06:03you see the death figures, and it's interesting to show this death toll that includes jihadis

06:09that were killed, military that were killed, and civilians that were killed, and you see how the

06:14youth of those countries is being decimated by the ongoing conflict since decades now.

06:21All right, thanks very much indeed for your reporting,

06:23Waseem Nasser, our terrorism expert, before us there.

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