Washington Center for Human Rights (WCHR) is dismayed by allegations of credible facts that the Burkinabè military and militias allied with the government killed at least 130 Fulani civilians in March of 2025 in western Burkina Faso. The atrocity-ridden killings by Operation “Green Whirlwind 2” (Tourbillon Vert 2) is a war crime and could represent crimes against humanity. WCHR demands immediate intervention by the international community, proper investigation, and complete accountability for these atrocities.
Units from Burkina Faso’s Rapid Intervention Battalions and hundreds of Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDPs), a state-aligned militia, were implicated in the killings, which occurred in the Boucle du Mouhoun region, mostly in the area surrounding the town of Solenzo. Human Rights Watch collected testimonials from victims, who were primarily women, children, and the elderly. According to reports, the killing was the outcome of a planned and orchestrated effort rather than an accident.
Systematic mass killings and civilian displacement
The military operation, which commenced on February 27 and ran into early April, was purported to uproot Islamist insurgents. But witnesses told of targeted Fulani civilian killings, large-scale executions, looting, and soldiers and VDPs obstructing exit routes. In one particularly chilling testimony, a survivor said drones hovered above while VDPs “shot at us like animals.
Human Rights Watch examined 11 videos of VDP combatants taunting over corpses and inciting calls for the “extermination” of Fulani citizens. Whole villages have since disappeared: Banwa province is now largely empty of its Fulani citizens, who were either killed, driven out, or captured.
Retaliation by armed groups and state failures
The Al Qaeda-affiliated organization Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (JNIM) carried out lethal retaliation strikes in Sourou province after the army’s advance, murdering at least 100 people they claimed were working with the military. Witnesses in the hamlet of Tiao reported that JNIM members executed as many as 70 persons after the Burkinabè military had temporarily occupied and then left the region.
Numerous witness accounts and video evidence refute the Burkinabè government’s claims that its soldiers had stopped terrorist assaults and saved people from being used as human shields. According to reports, there were only prearranged mass murders taking place in Solenzo at the time of the atrocities, not an ongoing fight.
WCHR demands urgent international action
- The Burkinabè government is urged by the Washington Center for Human Rights to immediately cease operations against civilians, dismantle abusive VDP units, and grant unrestricted access to humanitarian organizations and independent investigators.
- Burkina Faso should be a top priority for the UN Security Council and the African Union Peace and Security Council, which should also require an impartial international inquiry and take into account specific punishments against war crime-related leaders.
- JNIM and all other warring parties should abide by international humanitarian law, stop attacking civilians, and permit the safe return of displaced people.
All have committed war crimes, but the state’s ethnically targeted and coordinated violence, along with that of its auxiliaries, is posing a particular risk to regional peace. Burkina Faso today stands at a critical juncture—absent action now, the country teeters on the brink of full-scale ethnic war.