At least 100 civilians were killed and dozens more were arrested in a single military operation conducted by Burkina Faso’s special forces in late March 2025, according to a detailed Human Rights Watch report released this week. The incident occurred near the western town of Solenzo, in the restive Boucle du Mouhoun region, an area that has borne the brunt of jihadist violence that has swept across the Sahel since 2019.
A massacre documented
HRW researchers interviewed survivors, community leaders, and local humanitarian workers who described a well-coordinated assault spanning several days. Witnesses reported that military helicopters were deployed before ground troops moved into villages believed to harbor suspected Islamist militants. Many of those killed were men of fighting age, though HRW documented cases involving women and children. Satellite imagery analyzed by the organization corroborated witness accounts of large-scale destruction in affected settlements.
Government defends the operation
The Burkinabè government, which seized power in a 2022 coup and has governed under a transitional constitution since early 2023, has repeatedly defended its security strategy as a necessary response to an existential militant threat. Armed groups affiliated with both Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara have steadily expanded their footprint across northern and eastern Burkina Faso, displacing more than two million people and overwhelming state authority in vast rural areas.
Under the transitional government, the military has been granted expanded powers of detention and search in areas declared zones of exception. The Solenzo operation was conducted under this legal framework. A government spokesperson said the operation targeted confirmed terrorist strongholds and denied that civilians were deliberately killed, though the official statement acknowledged that “collateral effects” in complex operational environments could not be excluded.
Patterns of concern
HRW’s findings add to a mounting body of evidence suggesting that counterinsurgency operations in Burkina Faso have increasingly targeted civilian populations broadly, rather than focusing on identifiable militant figures. The organization’s Africa director noted that the pattern mirrors tactics that have drawn international condemnation in neighboring Mali and Niger, where similar coup-led governments have also curtailed press freedoms and restricted the access of independent investigators.
The conflict in Burkina Faso has grown increasingly complex, with multiple armed factions, community self-defense militias, and foreign military advisers all playing roles on a crowded battlefield. Russian private military contractors have been visible in several operations, while French forces—once the primary external security partner—have been largely expelled following a series of nationalist ruptures in the Sahel.
Humanitarian catastrophe
The humanitarian consequences are staggering. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that more than 6,000 people have been killed in conflict-related violence since 2019, the majority of them civilians. An estimated 2.5 million Burkinabè have been internally displaced, and neighboring countries are reporting growing refugee arrivals at their borders.
For families in the affected villages near Solenzo, the HRW report provides grim documentation of a day they say they will never forget. “They came by helicopter and by truck,” one witness told HRW researchers. “There was no warning, no explanation. By the time they left, half our village was gone.”
Call for accountability
HRW is calling for an independent investigation into the Solenzo operation, for compensation to be provided to affected families, and for the transitional government to ensure that security forces adhere to international humanitarian law. The African Union issued a statement expressing concern and calling for investigations, while ECOWAS has not moved toward any concrete accountability measures. Western governments have kept their public comments measured.
For analysts watching the region, the Solenzo report is another data point in a wider pattern of violence that is reshaping the social and political landscape of West Africa’s interior. Burkina Faso’s tragedy is not simply a story about terrorism. It is a story about what happens when fragile states, great-power competition, local conflicts, and humanitarian catastrophe collide—and when the international community looks away.