Islamist groups escalate retaliatory attacks on Burkina Faso civilians, HRW says

DAKAR (Reuters) - Jihadist groups in Burkina Faso have escalated attacks on civilians, often in retaliation against communities for refusing to join their ranks or allegedly collaborating with government troops, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

The junta-led West African nation has been grappling with Islamist insurgents, some with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State, since they spread into its territory from neighbouring Mali almost a decade ago.

Military leader Ibrahim Traore has pushed for civilians to play a role in fighting the insurgency, recruiting thousands of volunteer army auxiliaries known as VDPs and, more recently, requiring civilians to dig defensive trenches.

The jihadists have been retaliating with increasingly deadly attacks on civilians, Human Rights Watch (HRW) found.

The watchdog documented seven jihadist attacks between February and June that led to at least 128 civilian deaths. Insurgents targeted villages, a displaced people's camp and worshippers in a Catholic church.

Al Qaeda affiliate Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) claimed responsibility for six of the attacks.

The group has issued several warnings against civilians seen as collaborating with the army in the past, and witnesses told HRW this motivated the attacks.

Some villagers were killed after authorities forced them to return to areas from which jihadists had evicted them because some had joined the VDPs.

"We are between a rock and a hard place," a 56-year-old villager told HRW.

ISIS-affiliated Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) claimed the February church massacre, which was an apparent retaliation against Christians who did not abandon their religion, according to witnesses.

The junta, which has previously condemned HRW reports on military forces summarily executing civilians suspected of collaborating with jihadists, sent the watchdog a rare written response to the report in August.

In a letter, the justice minister rejected HRW's claim that the prosecution of serious crimes had been sluggish since the start of the conflict, and said all alleged human rights violations and abuses insurgents had committed were being investigated.

The minister also said that displaced people had returned voluntarily to areas that security forces had taken back and secured.

The HRW report did not include a JNIM attack on civilians ordered to dig trenches around the north-central town of Barsalogho at the end of August. Hundreds of people were shot dead, making it one of the deadliest in Burkina Faso's history.

Traore vowed to do better than his predecessors when he seized power in September 2022, the second coup in Burkina Faso that year, stoked in part by anger against authorities for worsening violence.

But the security situation has deteriorated further under his regime, which has also cracked down on dissent, analysts, rights groups and humanitarian workers say.

(Reporting by Sofia Christensen; Editing by Alessandra Prentice Editing by Sandra Maler)