Officials in Burkina Faso say the deadliest massacre the country has suffered since extremists invaded the West African nation was perpetrated by mostly children.
Addressing reporters this week in the capital, Ouagadougou, Government spokesman Ousseni Tamboura said the attackers were mostly children between the ages of 12 and 14.
The announcement comes as 10 percent of Burkina Faso’s schools have shuttered due to rising insecurity which researchers say makes children more vulnerable to abuse, human trafficking and combat recruitment.
Classrooms closed nationwide from March to June of last year because of the pandemic, and many students never returned. More than 300,000 children in the country have now lost access to education, according to the United Nations.
In 2020 alone, an estimated 3,270 children were recruited into armed groups in central and West Africa, the United Nations found. That accounts for more than a third of the world’s documented child soldiers.
Children have long been swept into the developing world’s wars. Many are kidnapped, plied with drugs and brainwashed, researchers say. Escapees describe the experience as traumatizing.
Children forced to join Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, for instance, said their abductors threatened to kill anyone who refused to participate in attacks. The extremist group is notorious for strapping bombs onto young girls, then sending them into crowds.
The government did not offer further details about the children involved in Burkina Faso’s conflict and it was unclear which group staged the attack in a region with multiple insurgencies.
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