According to survivors, residents of Seitenga were defenseless when the jihadists attacked on Saturday night, as security forces had withdrawn the previous day.
The official death toll from a jihadist attack in the northern city of Seitenga in northern Burkina Faso on Wednesday has risen to 86, with caretaker President-in-Chief Lt. Col. .
“Lt. Col. Damiba went (yesterday) to Seitenga this morning to express his condolences to the people of the nation” who suffered “a terrorist attack on the night of June 11-12, 2022 that claimed the lives of 86 people,” he said. the presidency of the African country in a press release he published.
An earlier official death toll had risen to 79 civilians in the city, a few kilometers from the border with Niger.
“What happened here is unthinkable for the unarmed civilian population who only wanted to live. “Your pain is the pain of all of Burkina Faso,” the military chief told survivors.
Authorities say more than 8,300 people have been displaced since the attack in Dori, a major city near Seitenga, 61 percent of them children.
Mr Damiba also addressed security forces in Dori yesterday.
“Now more than ever we must be vigilant and united in the face of the threat, which comes” often from across the border, “he said.
“We can no longer act as before. It is no longer possible to set up checkpoints as we did, because our positions are known “, he continued, calling on the army to” take into account the threat of terrorists in all (his) activities “.
The attack on Seitenga was condemned by the international community, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling it “disgusting” and African Union Commission President Musa Faki calling it an “uncharacteristic and shadowy massacre”. .
According to survivors, residents of Seitenga were defenseless when the jihadists attacked, as security forces had withdrawn the previous day.
Two days before the attack on the civilians, jihadists had already killed eleven gendarmes.
The weekend attack – according to official figures – is the second deadliest ever committed in Burkina Faso, after that of June 2021 in the village of Solhan, also in the north, near the border with Niger, where 132 people were killed. people, according to the government – 160 according to sources in the area.
On Tuesday at midnight (local time; yesterday at 03:00 Greek time) three days of national mourning began.
Lt. Col. Damiba, who overthrew President-elect Rock Marc Christian Cabore in a military coup in late January, has been widely criticized for failing to tackle jihadists. .
Since 2015, jihadist attacks swearing allegiance to either Al Qaeda or Islamic State have claimed the lives of more than 2,000 people and displaced nearly 2 million people in the country of 21 million, one of the poorest in the world despite vast gold deposits. that supplies.
