Burkina Faso’s armed forces say they are investigating a gruesome video that purports to show military volunteers hacking apart a dead body with machetes, while gloating to the camera.
Work is under way to verify the video and the people shown in it “so that they can be held accountable for their actions, if the facts are proven,” the general staff said in a statement.
The West African nation is ruled by the military, who seized power almost three years ago promising to end the chronic insecurity that has forced two million people from their homes.
But efforts to defeat armed groups and Islamist fighters have so far failed, with an estimated 40 per cent of the country under their control.
The video in question began circulating at the weekend.
It shows a corpse whose head and arms have been severed, and the stomach cut open.
“We beat them,” one of the men in the video shouts in Burkina Faso’s Dioula language. “It will all end this year. May God bless the VDP,” shouts another.
VDP is short for the Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland.
Burkina Faso has a tradition of armed community militias for whom the government created an official role in 2020, which has since been expanded under the military government.
Some of the men in the video are wearing military fatigues, but otherwise there is no indication of their names, nor where or when the incident happened. —BBC