The child soldiers who were exploited in the terrorist attack last June 4 in Burkina Faso were aged 12 to 14. In the village of Solhan, in the north-east of the country, hundreds of people died and the United Nations found that the armed assailants who set fire to the village, burning houses and opening fire on the inhabitants were, in fact, children. In the attack, the worst since 2015, more than 130 civilians were killed and it is the latest in a series of similar massacres carried out in the area by jihadist militias linked to Isis and Al Qaeda.
As reported by Reuters, to reveal the use of child soldiers was the government spokesman, Ousseni Tamboura, whose announcement was followed by the condemnation of the UN, which through its agency for the protection of children’s rights, Unicef, issued a strong disapproval message: «We strongly condemn the recruitment of children and adolescents by armed groups. This is a very serious violation of their fundamental rights, ”it was declared.
Despite the interventions of the UN and international armies, attacks by Islamic extremists continue unabated in the Sahel region, in West Africa, and in neighbors such as Mali and Niger. Local officials in northern Burkina Faso, where jihadists control large areas, found that the June attack was by far the most important case, both for its scale and for the high percentage of very young people it made up. the militia.
The very poor West African country, starting from 2018, has seen a sharp increase in attacks against civilians and soldiers, first concentrated in the north of the country, then also extended to the capital and other areas. Since then, hundreds of people have been killed and more than 1.2 million displaced people have been forced to find refuge in makeshift camps scattered across the arid areas of the north and east of the country.
The wave of attacks has led to the closure of over 2,000 schools, about one in ten, limiting access to education to over 300,000 children.