At least 70 people were killed in an attack on a remote village in Burkina Faso, the West African country's chief prosecutor said on Monday.
"The initial findings allowed the [fact-finding] team to provisionally estimate the number of people killed at seventy (70), most of them being children and the elderly (men and women)," prosecutor Simon Gnanou said in a statement.
The village of Zaongo in the country's Central North province was attacked on November 5, but the local gendarmerie learned of that the days later. A heavily guarded team of investigators and military officials was dispatched to the village late last week.
The attackers are yet to be identified, the prosecutor said. The exact number of casualties and missing persons will be determined during the investigation.
Burkina Faso has been suffering from the attacks on civilians: more than 17,000 civilians and troops have died, according to a non-governmental monitor, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.