BAMAKO: Suspected extremists massacred more than 130 civilians over the weekend in neighboring central Mali towns, the latest mass killings in the troubled Sahel region.
Local officials reported scenes of systematic killings by armed men in Diallassagou and two surrounding towns in the Bankass Cercle, a longtime hotbed of Sahelian violence.
“They have also been burning huts, houses, and stealing cattle — it’s really a free-for-all,” said a local official who for security reasons spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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 from Bankass, the main town in the area, said that the death toll was even higher than the 132 announced by the government, who have blamed Al-Qaeda affiliated extremists for the killings.
The national authorities broke their silence on Monday afternoon after alarming reports proliferated on social networks over the weekend.
Togo told AFP that army operations in the area two weeks ago had led to clashes with extremists. On Friday, the extremists returned on several dozen motorbikes to take revenge on the population, he added.
“They arrived and told the people, ‘You are not Muslims’ in Fulani, then took the men away, and a hundred people went with them,” he said. “Some two kilometers away, they systematically shot people.”
He said the bodies continued to be collected in the surrounding areas around Diallassagou on Monday.
The government blamed the attack on the 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 beyond state control and is prone to violence carried out by self-defense militias and inter-community reprisals.
Mali has since 2012 been rocked by an insurgency by groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the so-called Daesh group, plunging the country into crisis.
Violence that began in the north has since spread to the center and to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.
Civilians are often subjected to reprisals by extremists who accuse them of collaborating with the enemy.
Some areas of the country, especially in the center, have fallen under the control of the extremists, which vigorously enforce their world views.
Civilians also often find themselves caught in the crossfire in clashes between rival armed groups, including those affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group.
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 released Thursday.
A UN document published in March said nearly 600 civilians had been killed in Mali in 2021 in violence blamed mainly on extremist groups, but also on self-defense militias and armed forces.
The UN has expressed alarm in Security Council documents at the deteriorating security situation in central Mali, as well as in the north and in the so-called three-border zone on the borders of 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.
