Burkina Faso has denied claims that its soldiers killed 223 people in February attacks. Human Rights Watch accused the army of killing 179 in Soro and 44 in Nondin, including 56 children. The government calls these claims “baseless.”
\n“We strongly reject and condemn such baseless accusations,” said Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo.
\nAn investigation is ongoing, but the BBC and Voice of America were suspended for covering the HRW report.
\nHRW stated the killings may be part of a wider military campaign against civilians. Survivors said soldiers rounded up villagers before shooting them.
\n“These massacres are just the latest killings by the Burkina Faso military,” said Tirana Hassan, from HRW.
\nBurkina Faso’s military junta, in power since a 2022 coup, aims to end insurgency but violence persists. The EU and UN accuse the country of human rights abuses.
\nThe government criticizes media coverage, accusing it of undermining the military’s morale. Broadcasting BBC and Voice of America is halted for two weeks, and media outlets are warned against reporting on the issue.
\nLast week, Burkina Faso suspended the BBC and Voice of America radio stations for their coverage of a report by Human Rights Watch on a mass killing of civilians carried out by the country\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Burkina Faso has denied claims that its soldiers killed 223 people in February attacks. Human Rights Watch accused the army of killing 179 in Soro and 44 in Nondin, including 56 children. The government calls these claims “baseless.” “We strongly reject and condemn such baseless accusations,” said Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo. An investigation …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20272,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20267\/revisions\/20272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}