Human Rights Watch on Tuesday said that Mali’s military and an affiliated militia killed at least 31 civilians and burned homes in two attacks on villages in the central Segou region last month
The West African nation’s ruling junta is locked in an ongoing battle against jihadists, who recently started a fuel blockade on the country while extending their influence across a large swathe of territory.
The two attacked villages are in a region controlled by JNIM, the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, according to HRW.
Witnesses said Mali’s army and Dozo militiamen — traditional hunters consisting mainly of ethnic Bambara — accused them of collaborating with JNIM before carrying out the executions, HRW said.
The forces killed at least 21 men and burned at least 10 homes in the village of Kamona on October 2, according to the organisation.
Then on October 13, the same forces killed nine more men and one woman in the village of Balle about 55 kilometres (35 miles) away.
Villagers in Kamona were warned by JNIM fighters that the military was coming but “those who could not flee were rounded up and executed”, a survivor told HRW.
JNIM fighters had already left the village before the military’s arrival, witnesses said.
A total of 17 bodies were found under a tree in Kamona and four more on the northern side of town, while at least 10 huts and three sheds belonging to ethnic Fulani residents were burned.
In Balle, some residents were able to flee when they saw Malian soldiers in five pickup trucks and Dozo militiamen on at least 30 motorbikes arrive in the village.
Those in Balle said their town has been under JNIM control for several years.
“The army assumes we’re JNIM fighters. The army doesn’t differentiate between us and them”, one man told HRW.
Mali’s junta, which seized power in back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, had promised to stem the jihadist insurgency that has plagued the country for more than a decade but has achieved little success.
Over recent months, JNIM has carried out a series of attacks on military installations and other targets in the country, in addition to its economy-strangling fuel blockade which it began in September.
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