AT LEAST 132 people were killed in the worst terrorist attack in Burkina Faso for years over the weekend.

Authorities said on Saturday that gunmen had carried out an overnight raid on Solhan in the Sahel’s Yagha province. Homes and the local market were razed.

No group has claimed responsibility but the government said the attackers were Islamist insurgents. Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore slammed the “barbaric” attack.

The massacre raises further questions about the effectiveness of Operation Barkhane, the French military mission supposedly aimed at suppressing Islamist terror in the five former French colonies of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

Violence has been increasing across the region, in which French troops have been accused of war crimes including killing 19 people by bombing a wedding in Mali, where the government has also been overthrown in a military coup.

The long-term president of Chad, Idriss Deby, was killed — apparently in clashes with Islamist rebels — in April, and replaced by a military junta run by his son Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno.