by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - Jihadist militants believed to be members of Islamic State or al-Qaeda murdered over 100 people in northern Burkina Faso on Saturday, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports. The United Nations and European Union have condemned the attack and have called for an investigation.
Taking place in the Seytanga district near the border with Niger, Saturday’s killings were part of a wider jihadist insurgency that has become rooted in Burkina Faso. Over 3,000 people were forced to escape the region of Dori after the attack, ICC reports.
An estimated two million people have been displaced since the start of the insurgency in 2016, an estimated one million of these are Christian. There are five million Christians in Burkina Faso’s population of 21.5 million.
In a statement to the Christian Post, a survivor of Saturday’s attack said: “The terrorists came into the town on Saturday, market day. They opened fire as soon as they entered. They only aimed at men. They went from shop to shop, sometimes torching it. They opened fire on anyone who tried to run away. They stayed in the town all night.”
The country’s government is weak and has been unable to stop the rise of radicalized Islamic violence against civilians.
“Jihadist violence has been rapidly increasing in recent years, and extremists have exploited the government's weakness during the COVID-19 crisis to gain control of the country’s infrastructure,” the Open Doors USA advocacy organization explains in a website report on Burkina Faso.