(Al Jazeera Media Network) Around 170 people were “executed” in attacks on three villages in northern Burkina Faso a week ago, a regional prosecutor has said, as violence flares in the country.
Aly Benjamin Coulibaly said in a statement on Sunday that he had received reports of the attacks on the villages of Komsilga, Nodin and Soroe in Yatenga province on February 25, with a provisional toll of “around 170 people executed.”
The attacks left others wounded and caused material damage, the prosecutor for the northern town of Ouahigouya said, without apportioning blame to any group.
He said his office ordered an investigation and appealed to the public for information.
Survivors of the attacks told news agency AFP that dozens of women and young children were among the victims.
Local security sources cited by AFP said the attacks were separate from deadly incidents that happened on the same day at a mosque in the rural community of Natiaboani in eastern Burkina Faso and a church in the northern village of Essakane.
Authorities have yet to release an official death toll for those attacks, but a senior church official said at the time that at least 15 civilians were killed in the Natiaboani attack.
About half of Burkina Faso is outside government control, as armed groups have ravaged the country for years.
