Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Burkina Faso, Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), claimed on Thursday it was targeting militias allied with the ruling junta, not civilians, when it launched an attack that killed almost 300 people last weekend.

“Those who were eliminated in this attack are nothing but militias affiliated with the Burkinabe army … not as they lied and said that they were civilians,” the terrorist organization said in an angry communique.

The JNIM attack, conducted near the northern town of Barsalogho, was among the deadliest Burkina Faso has experienced in a decade. The victims reportedly included a number of women and children.

The attack took place after the military government of Burkina Faso warned area residents that insurgent forces were preparing an assault. The people of Barsalogho reluctantly turned out to help the military dig trenches to protect the town. Much of their reluctance was due to fear that the insurgents would see them helping to dig the trenches and target them for aiding the military.

That fear came true last Saturday when a swarm of JNIM fighters attacked the trench-builders, killing nearly everyone involved in the project. JNIM social media accounts posted videos of slain civilians lying next to their shovels in the half-dug trenches.

The insurgents also killed the Burkinabe soldiers who organized the trench-digging project, stealing their weapons and a military ambulance. Over a hundred wounded survivors of the attack are convalescing in a local hospital.

Burkina Faso security minister Mahamadou Sana on Tuesday denounced the murder of civilians and vowed to “make sure the enemy knows that we will never again accept such barbarity on our territory.”

“In any case, we want to assure the Burkinabe people that we are committed to protecting the Burkinabe and their property and will stand firm,” Sana added.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonia Guterres on Tuesday condemned the “terrible attack,” as well as the “pretty horrific” conditions in the conflict zone.

“According to local officials, at least 90,000 displaced people were living in Barsalogho as of last year. These families had sought refuge there from insecurity in surrounding areas, and their arrival placed an additional strain on local services and supplies,” said Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Dujarric noted the entire province around Barsalogho is facing acute hunger due to the large number of refugees, and the difficulty humanitarian agencies have experienced with delivering aid to the region.

Some observers of the conflict also criticized the Burkinabe junta for putting so many civilians in harm’s way. The junta runs a program known as “Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland” (VDP) that is not easily distinguished from the kind of regime-allied militia groups that JNIM claims it was attacking.

The VDP program was launched before the army overthrew the civilian government in September 2022, but junta president Ibrahim Traore demanded more civilians to be pressed into service. Fortifying their towns against insurgents was one of the primary tasks he had in mind for the civilian conscripts.

A victim’s advocate group called Collective Justice for Barsalogho on Wednesday accused the junta of negligence for forcing civilians to dig trenches that turned into “mass graves.”

The group said the military “obliged people, through threats, to take part in construction work against their will. “Our parents were led to the slaughter,” the group’s statement said.

Collective Justice for Barsalogho also said the death toll from the JNIM attack could be much higher than Burkinabe officials have admitted. Group members reported tending to mass graves with over a hundred bullet-riddled corpses packed into them.

The JNIM is a Salafist Muslim jihadi organization formed in Mali in 2017. The new terrorist entity was established by merging four Malian extremist groups together and swearing allegiance to al-Qaeda. Since its formation, JNIM has expanded operations into Burkina Faso and Niger.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are all governed by military juntas, and all three are struggling with jihadist insurgents. Niger evicted U.S. counter-terrorism forces from its soil under the Biden-Harris administration, and is increasingly looking to Russia for military assistance.