About 200 People Confirm Dead Men Shot As They Slept

The crisis in some of sub-Saharan Africa's poorest states presents an imminent threat to Europe's security, and by extension the United States, analysts say, in providing a secure and spacious breeding ground for terror networks. US officials have described the "wildfire of terrorism" in the Sahel, with al Qaeda and ISIS "on the march" in West Africa, aiming to "carve out a new caliphate."

Illicit gold has emerged as a key source of funding for jihadist groups, who have been seizing so-called "informal mines" -- small-scale mining sites which rely largely on physical labor and basic technology to extract precious metals and minerals -- in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger since 2016, according to a Crisis Group report from 2019.

The men were shot as they slept outside, having spent their days underground, choking in the Sahel dust, digging and panning for gold.

They were killed by children some apparently as young as 12 and men who had arrived on dozens of motorbikes and were egged on in their murderous spree by women who knew the village well, according to witnesses. The local militia had left. The army came to the rescue for a matter of hours in the morning but then left before dusk, letting the attackers return the following night to burn the village down and most likely steal what gold it had.

In the end, somewhere between 170 and 200 people died, according to estimates by a local police source and other officials, and it remains unclear who the killers were.

The massacre in Solhan, northern Burkina Faso, took place over two nights of extraordinary brutality in June 2021. The killings soon faded from international headlines, absorbed into the rhythms of persistent violence in the Sahel region, an arid stretch of land sandwiched by the Sahara Desert and the African savannah, and wracked by the climate emergency.

In the lawless and remote communities of the Sahel, jihadists increasingly hold sway. Yet one likely culprit in this incident, al Qaeda's local affiliate JNIM, condemned the attack's brutality. And the other main suspect, ISIS, chose to blame it on al Qaeda, according to an ISIS-affiliated newspaper.

Dozens of interviews by CNN with survivors, local witnesses and Burkina Faso officials paint the most complete and disturbing narrative yet of a rampage perpetrated over 48 hours, partially by children, that the US-backed and trained Burkina Faso military was powerless to stop.

Yet few officials or witnesses agree on a coherent and consistent motive for the attack. Were the child attackers sent for Solhan's gold, as currency for their Islamist masters? Was it a punishment killing ordered by jihadists against villagers loyal to the government?

The story of Solhan is a notable mark in the patina of brutality spreading across the Sahel. The intervention -- and now ongoing drawdown -- of the French military, the arrival of European Union forces, and the Pentagon's sustained support mean billions have been spent in attempts to bolster the local security forces. Yet violence has spiralled instead, particularly in Burkina Faso over recent years.

Bachir Ismael Ouédraogo, Burkina Faso's minister of energy and mines, said the country lost 20 tons of gold through informal mining and exports every year, worth roughly $1 billion on the open market.

Ouédraogo describes it as a "war economy," a system that uses well-coordinated routes across the African continent. "The gold you end up buying is financing terrorism, and affecting our families here," he added.