About 600 people were killed within a few hours by members affiliated with Al-Qaeda in an August attack on the town of Barsalogho in Burkina Faso, a report claimed on Friday. The residents of Barsalogho were shot dead on August 24 as they dug protective trenches.

The attack, in which most of the victims were women and children, was one of the worst in the West African country’s history, which has been grappling with a jihadist insurgency waged by rebels affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

The members of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda affiliate based in Mali and active in Burkina Faso, shot down villagers as they swept into the outskirts of Barsalogho on bikes.

While the United Nations estimated a death count of around 200, JNIM said it had killed nearly 300 “fighters”. However, CNN, citing a French government security assessment, reported that up to 600 people were shot dead in the attack.

A man, who said he was one of dozens of men told to dig the trenches by the army, told CNN that he was 4 kilometers from the town at about 11 am, in a trench, when he heard the first gunshots.

“I started to crawl into the trench to escape. But it seemed that the attackers were following the trenches. So, I crawled out and came across the first bloodied victim. There was blood everywhere on my way. There was screaming everywhere. I got down on my stomach under a bush, until later in the afternoon, hiding,” he said.

Another survivor, who lost two members of her family in the attack, said JNIM killed people “all day long”.

“For three days we were collecting bodies – scattered everywhere. Fear got into our hearts. At the burial time, there are so many bodies lying on the ground that burying was hard,” she said.

The military reportedly ordered the locals to dig a vast trench network around the town to protect it from jihadists circulating nearby.

JNIM has warned civilians against endorsing the army in its fight against the insurgency.

According to the ACLED analysis group, which tracks global conflict, members affiliated with Al-Qaeda – which was founded by Osama bin Laden and carried out the 9/11 attacks in the US – and the Islamic State group have killed about 3,800 this year.

Since the start of the conflict in 2015, more than 20,000 people have been killed and over two million displaced in Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries situated in the Sahel, a region wracked by instability.

(With agency inputs)

“A military camp in Mali’s restive north was attacked on September 8, a day after two separate assaults by al-Qaeda-linked insurgents killed 49 civilians and 15 government soldiers,” the military said.

“Response and evaluation in progress,” the armed forces said in a brief statement about Friday’s attack on a Malian military camp in the Gao region.

“Thursday’s attacks targeted a passenger boat near the city of Timbuktu on the Niger River and a military position in Bamba further downstream in Gao,” the military junta said in a statement read on state television.

It said responsibility for the attacks was claimed by JNIM, an umbrella coalition of armed groups aligned with al-Qaeda. The passenger boat was attacked near the village of Zarho, about 90 km (55 miles) east of Timbuktu.

The statement said the government killed about 50 assailants while responding to the attacks. It declared three days of national mourning to honor the civilians and soldiers killed in the attacks.

Malian army spokesman Souleymane Dembélé attributed the high death toll to the inability of some of the boat’s passengers to swim, suggesting some might have drowned.

“When the boat was attacked, the soldiers on board exchanged fire with the terrorists. Unfortunately, many civilians who couldn’t swim jumped into the water,” Mr. Dembélé told The Associated Press.

Al-Qaeda-affiliated and Islamic State-linked groups have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, the United Nations said in a report last month, as they take advantage of a weak government and of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement.

“The stalled implementation of the peace deal and sustained attacks on communities have offered the IS group and al-Qaeda affiliates a chance “to re-enact the 2012 scenario,” the report said.

That’s the year when a military coup took place in the West African country and rebels in the north formed an Islamic State two months later.

The extremist rebels were forced from power in the north with the help of a French-led military operation, but they moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali in 2015 and remain active.

In August 2020, Mali’s President was overthrown in a coup that included an Army colonel who carried out a second coup and was sworn in as President in June 2021.

He developed ties to Russia’s military and Russia’s Wagner mercenary group whose head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a plane crash in Russia on August 23.

Timbuktu has been blockaded by armed groups since late August, when the Malian Army deployed reinforcements to the region. The insurgents are preventing the desert city from being supplied with basic goods.

More than 30,000 residents have fled the city and a nearby region, according to an August report by the United Nations’ humanitarian agency.

The deadly attacks come as the UN prepares to withdraw its 17,000-member peacekeeping mission, MINUSMA, from Mali at the government’s request. The pull-out is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

The UN deployed peacekeepers in 2013 and MINUSMA has become the most dangerous UN mission in the world, with more than 300 personnel killed. Growing insecurity in Mali has increased instability in West Africa’s volatile Sahel region. The military vowed in the two coups since 2020 to stop the jihadi violence.