At least 100 villagers and soldiers have been killed in central Burkina Faso during a weekend attack on a village by al-Qaida-linked jihadis, in what a regional specialist calls one of the deadliest this year in the conflict-battered West African nation. Wassim Nasr, a Sahel specialist and senior research fellow at the Soufan Center security think tank, told The Associated Press that at least one hundred bodies were counted in videos of the attack. He said villagers were helping security forces dig up trenches to protect security outposts on Saturday, when fighters with the JNIM group opened fire on them. Burkina Faso’s security minister Mahamadou Sana said the victims included soldiers and civilians.
