Burkina Faso sees more child soldiers as jihadi attacks rise

Awoken by gunshots in the middle of the night, Fatima Amadou was shocked by what she saw among the attackers: children

DORI, Burkina Faso -- Awoken by gunshots in the middle of the night, Fatima Amadou was shocked by what she saw among the attackers: children. Guns slung over their small frames, the children chanted “Allahu akbar,” as they surrounded her home in Solhan town in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region. Some were so young they couldn’t even pronounce the words, Arabic for “God is great,” said the 43-year-old mother. “When I saw the kids, what came to my mind was that (the adults) trained these kids to be assassins, and they came to kill my children,” Amadou told The Associated Press by phone from Sebba town, where she now lives. She and her family are among the lucky ones who survived the June attack, in which about 160 people were killed — the deadliest such assault since the once-peaceful West African nation was overrun by fighters linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State about five years ago. As that violence increases, so too does the recruitment of child soldiers.