The six, among the 100,000 volunteers recruited to help the army fight the jihadists plaguing the west African country, face sentences of between two and 11 years after being convicted by a military tribunal in the northwest last week.

Both the regular army and the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDP) have been accused of committing abuses towards civilians, which Burkina Faso's military authorities have always denied.

In turn, the fighters face hefty death tolls from jihadist attacks, with the junta struggling to contain a long-running radical Islamist insurgency since taking power in a coup in 2022.

"In an effort to strengthen discipline... the military tribunal of Ouagadougou held a significant field hearing from November 19 to 21 at the Nazi Boni Camp in Dedougou," a town in the west, a judicial source told AFP.

"Four VDPs were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two to three years for mutilating the corpse of a person presumed to be a terrorist," the source added.

"Two other VDPs received eleven years in prison, with three years suspended for one and four years for the other, for murders committed on several individuals," a separate judicial source said.

"These VDPs had detained three individuals at a checkpoint in the locality of Tcheriba. The next day, the lifeless bodies of these individuals were discovered by the local population," the second source added.

Junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore seized power on the promise of putting a stop to the spiral of violence which has wracked Burkina Faso for more than a decade.

But the jihadists, who have pledged allegiance to either Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group, have continued to expand their influence across swathes of the desert nation.