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Malian authorities reported that suspected jihadists massacred more than 130 civilians over the weekend in neighboring cities in central Mali, marking the latest mass murder in the troubled Sahel region.
Local officials reported scenes of systematic killings by gunmen in Diallassagou and two surrounding villages in the Bankass circle, a former hotbed of Sahelian violence.
“They have also burned huts and houses and stolen cattle, it’s a real pitched battle,” said a local official who, for security reasons, spoke on condition of anonymity.
Both he and another official, who like him had fled his village, said the death toll was still being counted on Monday.
Nouhoum Togo, a local official in Bankass, the area’s main town, said it was even higher than the 132 announced by the government, which has blamed al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists for the killings.
National authorities broke their silence on Monday afternoon, after alarming reports proliferated on social media over the weekend.
Togo told the AFP agency that Army operations in the area two weeks ago had caused clashes with the jihadists. On Friday, the jihadists returned on several dozen motorcycles to take revenge on the population, he added.
“They came and told people ‘you are not Muslim’ in Fulani, then they took the men away and a hundred people left with them,” he said. “About two kilometers away, they systematically shot people.”
He said bodies were still being collected around Diallassagou on Monday.
Blame the Macina Katiba
The government blamed the attack on Fulani preacher Amadou Kouffa’s organization, the Macina Katiba. Central Mali has been plagued by violence since the al Qaeda-affiliated organization emerged in 2015.
A large part of the area is outside state control and is prone to violence carried out by self-defense militias and inter-community reprisals.
Since 2012, Mali has been rocked by an insurgency by groups linked to al Qaeda and the self-styled Islamic State group, which has plunged the country into crisis.
The violence, which began in the north, has since spread to the center and to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. Civilians are often subjected to reprisals by jihadists who accuse them of collaborating with the enemy.
Some areas of the country, especially in the center, have fallen under the control of the jihadists, who forcefully impose their vision of the world.
Civilians are also often caught in the crossfire of clashes between rival armed groups, including those affiliated with Al Qaeda and the self-styled Islamic State.
The number of civilians killed in attacks attributed to extremist groups has almost doubled since 2020 in the central Sahel, a coalition of West African NGOs said in a report published on Thursday.
A UN document published in March said nearly 600 civilians had been killed in Mali in 2021 in violence attributed mainly to jihadist groups, but also to self-defense militias and the armed forces.
The UN has expressed its alarm in Security Council documents at the deteriorating security situation in central Mali, as well as in the north and in the so-called tri-border area on the border with Burkina Faso and Niger.
Some 20 civilians were killed on Saturday in the northern region of Gao. Last Wednesday, an armed group reported the death of 22 people in the Menaka region.
In northern Burkina Faso, 86 people were killed in June in Seytenga.
*With AFP; adapted from its English version
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