BAMAKO, Mali: A community militia killed 32 civilians in an attack on a village in central Mali then returned shortly after Malian soldiers left and killed four more, the head of the West African nation’s largest ethnic Fulani association said late Sunday.
Mali’s government earlier in the day confirmed the first attack and said 16 people were killed, as the Fulani ethnic group faces growing pressure over accusations of links to Al-Qaeda extremists.
The death tolls differed because many bodies had been buried by the time Malian soldiers responded, Abdoul Aziz Diallo with the Tabital Pulaku association told The Associated Press.
The original attack occurred Saturday when militia members killed herders outside Koumaga before entering and “starting to fire on the villagers,” Diallo said.
As soon as Malian soldiers left the village Sunday afternoon militia members returned, killing a man and his three sons, Diallo said.
Koumaga village has the reputation of being the birthplace of a number of Al-Qaeda-linked extremists. Such fighters have been attacking security forces and a UN peacekeeping mission in Mali regularly since 2015.
The growing insecurity is a key concern ahead of the July 29 election in which President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is running again.
Concerns have risen over alleged abuses by Malian security forces during counterterror operations in Fulani-majority areas where extremists linked to Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group have carried out attacks and recruited locals as fighters.
Last week the United States expressed concern after Mali’s government acknowledged allegations by the Fulani association and others that soldiers had entered another village, Nantaka, separated out 25 Fulani men and killed them.
Mali’s government also confirmed the existence of three graves discovered by residents outside the village and said it would investigate.
The vast majority of civilians reported killed in counterterror operations have been Fulani, and human rights groups have warned that abuses risk pushing villagers into joining extremist groups.
Mali is part of a five-nation regional force launched a year ago to counter the growing extremist threat in the vast Sahel region. Reversing the worsening security situation “will be frustratingly, unsatisfyingly slow,” the US military’s special operations commander in Africa, Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks, told the AP earlier this year.
36 dead in militia attack on village in central Mali: Group
36 dead in militia attack on village in central Mali: Group
- The militia members first killed herders outside Koumaga before entering and “starting to fire on the villagers
- Security is a key concern ahead of the July 29 election in which President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is running again
Military intervention in Iran ‘not the preferred option’: French minister
- The president’s son blamed foreign interference for the protests’ violent turn, but said “the security and law enforcement forces may have made mistakes that no one intends to defend and that must be addressed”
PARIS: Military intervention in Iran, where authorities launched a deadly crackdown on protesters that killed thousands, is not France’s preferred option, its armed forces minister said on Sunday.
“I think we must support the Iranian people in any way we can,” Alice Rufo said on the political broadcast “Le Grand Jury.”
But “a military intervention is not the preferred option” for France, she said, adding it was “up to the Iranian people to rid themselves of this regime.”
Rufo lamented how hard it was to “document the crimes the Iranian regime has carried out against its population” due to an internet shutdown.
“The fate of the Iranian people belongs to Iranians, and it is not for us to choose their leaders,” said Rufo.
The son of Iran’s president, who is also a government adviser, has called for internet connectivity to be restored, warning that the more than two-week blackout there would exacerbate anti-government sentiment.
Yousef Pezeshkian, whose father, Masoud, was elected president in 2024, said, “Keeping the internet shut will create dissatisfaction and widen the gap between the people and the government.”
“This means those who were not and are not dissatisfied will be added to the list of the dissatisfied,” he wrote in a Telegram post that was later picked up by the IRNA news agency.
Such a risk, he said, was greater than that of a return to protests if connectivity were restored.
The younger Pezeshkian, a media adviser to the presidency, said he did not know when internet access would be restored.
He pointed to concerns about the “release of videos and images related to last week’s ‘protests that turned violent’” as a reason the internet remained cut off, but criticized the logic.
Quoting a Persian proverb, he posted “‘He whose account is clean has nothing to fear from scrutiny.’”
The president’s son blamed foreign interference for the protests’ violent turn, but said “the security and law enforcement forces may have made mistakes that no one intends to defend and that must
be addressed.”
He went on to say that “the release of films is something we will have to face sooner or later. Shutting down the internet won’t solve anything; it will just postpone the issue.”
