Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, an armed group linked to al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack.
An al-Qaeda-linked armed group, Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), has claimed responsibility for what it says was an attack that killed 200 people and wounded at least 140 in central Burkina Faso.
The attack took place on Saturday in the Barsalogho region, about 40 kilometres north of the strategic town of Kaya, which analysts say is home to the last permanent force protecting the capital, Ouagadougou.
Fighters opened fire on teams of people digging trenches designed to protect security posts. Several soldiers went missing after the attack and the attackers took weapons and a military ambulance.
Reporting from Dakar, Senegal, Al Jazeera's Nicholas Haque said JNIM released gruesome videos of the aftermath of the attack.
“We see men, women and children lying in trenches they dug themselves. They have become mass graves,” he said, adding that the local hospital has called in doctors, nurses and other medical staff from Kaya to treat those injured in the attack.
Haque said the Burkinabe army knew on Friday that an attack was coming and called on the population to dig trenches.
“This shows the desperation of the Burkinabe forces, which have lost control of half their territory to armed groups linked to Al Qaeda,” he added.
Burkina Faso has severed ties with Western countries such as France, which had been involved in helping the country's security forces fight armed groups.
Haque said the government had recently been asking for the help of Russian mercenary fighters to support it strategically but also to help stop attacks.
“Despite that assistance, it seems that these attacks are getting closer and closer to the capital,” Haque said, noting that the country’s military leaders, who came to power in a coup in 2022, have also had to deal with several coup attempts due to discontent with the way they have handled the fight against armed groups.
Armed groups have killed thousands of people and displaced more than two million in Burkina Faso for more than a decade.
The country topped the Norwegian Refugee Council's (NRC) recent list of the world's most neglected displacement crises.
Violence killed more than 8,400 people last year, double the number of deaths from the previous year, according to the NRC.
