Groups with links to al-Qaeda and ISIL are accused of ‘massacring villagers, displaced people, and Christian worshippers’.

Armed groups with links to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) have escalated attacks on civilians in Burkina Faso, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in a report.

Publishing the report on Wednesday, the NGO documented the killing of at least 128 civilians in seven attacks by “armed groups” across the country since February 2024 that “violated international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes”.

The report states that the groups have been “massacring villagers, displaced people, and Christian worshippers”.

“We are witnessing an incredibly concerning surge in Islamist violence,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at HRW. She called on the leaders of the groups to cease their “deadly attacks”.

Led by the military government of Ibrahim Traore, the West African nation has been grappling with an armed rebellion by the ISIL affiliate in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and the al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) since they moved into Burkina Faso from neighbouring Mali in 2016.

Traore has pushed for civilians to play a role in fighting the groups. He has recruited thousands of volunteer army auxiliaries and forced civilians to dig defensive trenches.

In a report full of witness accounts, the rights group documented gruesome atrocities, including an ISGS-claimed attack on a church in the village of Essakane, near the border with Niger, in February, carried out in apparent retaliation against Christians who refused to abandon their religion, that killed at least 12 people.

HRW said JNIM was involved in six other attacks, including a June assault on an army base near Niger in which 107 soldiers and at least 20 civilians were killed.

A JNIM attack on civilians digging trenches around the north-central town of Barsalogho at the end of August was reported to have killed up to 400 people.

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project was cited in the report as saying more than 26,000 people had been killed – including soldiers, militiamen and civilians – in Burkina Faso since 2016.