The jihadist attack on civilians in Barsalogho, which has become a symbol of instability in Burkina Faso, is described in detail. The unarmed population became the victims of a brutal attack, and the defensive ditches that were supposed to protect the inhabitants turned into a mass grave. The situation is complicated by the lack of an effective military response and the worsening humanitarian crisis, which requires an immediate international response to protect the civilian population.
Videos circulating online captured the moment militants killed more than 100 unarmed residents of Barsalogho, Burkina Faso, who were digging trenches to defend the town. Satellite images confirm that new trenches were dug after the massacre. A local collective accuses the army of forcing civilians to work when an attack by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists took place. Although the government has not yet confirmed the exact number of dead, satellite data and geolocation videos confirm the scale of the tragedy.
On Saturday morning, August 24, armed men on motorcycles approached the outskirts of Barsalog, where civilians were digging defensive trenches. One of the videos, shot by a JNIM operative, captured the moment when more than twenty motorcycles raced towards the trenches. Upon arrival, the militants hurried and continued to approach the trenches, opening fire with automatic weapons. Other videos show the aftermath of the attack, including executions and bodies in trenches, but some of this footage, allegedly taken elsewhere, has not yet been positively identified.
At the end of 2022, satellite images show the construction of trenches around the western outskirts of Barsalog. By 2023, the fortifications had expanded to larger trenches surrounding the northwestern part of the city, as highlighted by a New York Times researcher.
Satellite images from March 17, 2024, obtained from Airbus and available through Google Earth Pro, show trenches near Barsaloggo. Additional PlanetScope images from August 22, 2024 indicate that construction work on these trenches continued. SAR data received on August 28 confirms the appearance of two new trenches. After the jihadist attack, another 3.75 km of defensive structures were built. This data helps to further analyze the events in the region and is available to researchers under the CC-BY 4.0 license.
One JNIM video shows militants carrying out execution-style killings by shooting people lying in trenches at close range. One man in a trench is seen trying to escape when he is shot in the back. Several bodies can be seen in piles scattered along the trenches.
In August 2024, JNIM militants released a video lasting about three minutes showing at least 124 bodies of civilians near trenches. Shovels and digging tools are visible in the frame, and the dead are not in military uniform and without weapons. The video was geolocated to the east of Barsaloggo, where the trench widening process is also visible. Images from Google Earth Pro and SkySat helped pinpoint the scene, which is about 3.8 km east of the city center.
A telephone pole is also briefly visible in the aftermath footage. We used this additional visual cue to confirm geolocation.
In another video, militants are seen moving around the line of trenches towards Barsaloy to the sounds of gunfire. This video shows over 110 motorcycles geolocated by Bellingcat to the same trench north of the road to Nyang.
According to reports, the attackers arrived at the trenches around 10 a.m., as evidenced by the direction of the shadows in the video. However, it was not possible to determine the exact time.
In addition to the footage released by JNIM, Bellingcat discovered that another video shared online and cited in media reports purporting to show the aftermath of the August 24 attack was actually filmed in neighboring Mali in a separate incident.
By extracting keyframes from the video using ffmpeg and reverse image search by one of the keyframes, we determined that the video was posted online prior to the Barsalogho attack. User X @WarWatchs posted on August 18, 2024 that the video showed the aftermath of another JNIM attack in Melguet, Mali, a town near the border with Mauritania, hundreds of kilometers from Barsalog.
A Google search for the keywords JNIM and Melgué led us to an older post by France 24 journalist and Sahel expert Wassim Nasr, which includes a video taken at the same location but from a different angle.
Using two videos, it was established that the widely circulated video of the events in Barsaloggo was actually filmed in Melga. This was made possible by the identification of several buildings and a hill that match Wassim Nasr’s video. This helped to confirm that the scene belongs to a different region, filmed in Mali, and not in Burkina Faso.
The Russian-language Telegram channel @Departamente, dedicated to the conflict in the Sahel countries, also shared videos taken by JNIM fighters at the scene of the attack.
Through its Az-Zallaqa media unit, JNIM confirmed that they attacked military positions in Melgué and the vehicles in the Az-Zallaqa photos match the vehicles in the video that @Departamente posted on Telegram.