Surprise: Africa’s biggest recent massacre was perpetrated by children

The government of Burkina Faso said today that the authors of the solhan massacre earlier this month – the bloodiest since 2015 in the country and which left at least 160 civilians dead – were children between 12 and 14 years old.

The spokesperson for the executive, Ousseni Tamboura, said that “the interrogations revealed that the attackers were mostly kids“, and added that until this moment two suspects they were arrested.

Those arrested reportedly gave names linked to the group behind the attack, affiliated with the jihadist coalition Support Group for Islam and Muslims (JNIM), an affiliate of Al-Qaeda in Mali, reported the portal Burkina24. This, despite the fact that JNIM publicly disassociated itself from the event.

It is interesting to note that in Burkina Faso, as in other countries of the same continent, the average age of the population is extremely low. In other words: a considerable proportion of the population he is very young. Therefore, and for reasons statistics, almost all activities which, in other societies, are considered “adult” in these latitudes have a large adolescent participation.