2015

Insurgency begins — JNIM attacks spread from Mali

Following the 2012–2013 Malian crisis and the intervention of French forces, jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda begin expanding southward into Burkina Faso. Initial attacks target security forces in the Sahel and Est regions. The government of President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré struggles to contain the rapidly spreading insurgency. Villages in border areas begin experiencing raids, kidnappings, and targeted killings of community leaders and teachers — the early hallmarks of insurgent social control.

JAN 2019

Yirgou massacre — communal violence and reprisal killings

Following a jihadist attack on a local security chief in the Centre-Nord region, Koglweogo self-defence militias carry out reprisal massacres against Fulani communities in Yirgou and surrounding villages, killing between 49 and over 100 civilians. The episode illustrates how the insurgency is fracturing inter-communal relations and generating secondary waves of killing beyond direct insurgent attacks. Survivors flee northward; mass graves from the reprisals are partially documented by Human Rights Watch.

2020–2021

Crisis escalation — hundreds killed in market and village attacks

JNIM and ISGS attacks intensify dramatically. The Boulkiemdé massacre (November 2020) kills over 30 civilians at a gold mine. The Solhan attack (June 2021) kills over 130 people in what is then Burkina Faso's deadliest insurgent attack, with bodies buried in improvised graves at the village perimeter. Insurgent groups begin systematically blockading towns, creating humanitarian sieges that produce additional casualties from starvation and disease — a pattern with its own burial signature in overloaded local cemeteries.

JAN / SEP 2022

Double coup — junta seizes power, expels international forces

A first military coup in January 2022 overthrows President Kaboré. A second coup in September 2022 brings Lieutenant-Colonel Ibrahim Traoré to power. The new junta aligns with Russia, expels French forces, and requests the withdrawal of MINUSMA peacekeepers. International NGOs and UN monitors face increasing access restrictions. The diplomatic rupture with France and Western partners accelerates a shift toward Wagner Group and Malian military cooperation — and toward information blackout conditions that severely limit external documentation of killings.

2022–2023

State killings documented — Nouna, Karma, and VDP executions

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International document multiple incidents of Burkinabè security forces and their allied VDP (Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland) executing civilians suspected of supporting insurgents. Victims are taken from their homes or stopped at checkpoints, killed, and buried in clandestine pits on the outskirts of towns including Nouna and Karma. Satellite imagery shows new earthworks adjacent to military facilities in the weeks following documented killing events.

OCT 2023

Sanmatenga convoy massacre — 50+ killed on supply route

Jihadist fighters ambush a civilian convoy traveling along a supply route in the Centre-Nord region, killing over 50 people including civilian volunteers escorting the convoy. The attack underscores the systematic targeting of supply lines to besieged towns — a strategy that produces both direct massacre victims and secondary famine-related deaths. Bodies from the attack are buried along the roadside; Khthon geolocates the site using terrain analysis and video evidence shared by regional monitors.

AUG 2024

Barsalogho — hundreds executed in defensive trenches

In what becomes one of the worst single massacres of the Sahel crisis, JNIM fighters attack Barsalogho in the Centre-Nord region. Civilians who had been conscripted to dig defensive trenches are forced into the trenches and executed. Estimates of the death toll range from 200 to over 400. The trench pattern is subsequently identified in satellite imagery — a clear, linear earthwork signature that provides verifiable evidence of the massacre's location and scale even under access restrictions. The Barsalogho case becomes a methodological reference for GEOINT documentation of Sahelian massacres.

Ongoing

Khthon monitoring — trench mapping and regional coalition

Khthon maintains active satellite monitoring of Burkina Faso's northern and central provinces, tracking fresh earthworks in scrubland, defensive trench construction near besieged towns, and cemetery expansion following major casualty events. Video geolocation from militant and survivor footage is integrated with satellite time-series to build incident chronologies. Coalition partnerships with regional NGOs and open-source investigators ensure that evidence is preserved against deliberate concealment, weather degradation, and agricultural disturbance — keeping Burkina Faso's growing archive of hidden violence accessible to future accountability processes.