Attack on Mali Fulani Village Kills 23: Local Mayor

Reuters
By Reuters
July 1, 2019World News
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Attack on Mali Fulani Village Kills 23: Local Mayor
Soldiers of the Malian army in central Mali, in the border zone with Burkina Faso and Niger, on Nov 1, 2017. (Daphne Benoit/AFP/Getty Images)

BAMAKO—At least 23 people are dead and 300 missing after an attack on Sunday on a village of Fulani herders in central Mali, where communal violence has surged in recent months, a local mayor said.

Two other Fulani communities were targeted on Sunday evening, June 30, amid a string of deadly assaults between herders and ethnic Dogon farmers who have long fought over land and resources but whose rivalry has been stoked this year by the growing presence of armed extremist groups.

After raiding the village of Saran, the attackers went on to another village called Bidi, but people had already fled, said Harouna Sankare, mayor of nearby Ouenkoro, who blamed the attack on Dogon hunters.

French Defence Minister Florence Parly with Malian president Keita
French Defence Minister Florence Parly (L) meets with Malian president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita at the presidential palace in Bamako on Aug. 1, 2017. (Habibou Kouyate/AFP/Getty Images)

“Since they didn’t find anybody (in Bidi), they burned the village and the houses and attacked the cattle,” he said.

Other local officials confirmed the attack but did not share the number of casualties. Neither the central authorities nor the army were reachable for comment.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s government has vowed to disarm the militias but has struggled to do so.

Tit-for-tat violence between the rival communities has escalated this year. In March, suspected Dogon militiamen killed more than 150 Fulani in central Mali, one of the worst acts of bloodshed in the country’s recent history. Raids on Dogon villages in June killed over 40 people.

Instability is fueled further by the presence of jihadist terrorists, who use northern and central Mali as launchpads to stage attacks across the Sahel.

Elsewhere in central Mali, 12 civilians including a baby were killed on Sunday when the vehicle they were traveling in hit a landmine.

Local mayor Issiaka Ganame said none of the passengers survived. It was not clear who laid the mine, but jihadist groups are known to deploy this kind of ordnance in the region.

‘Regrouped and Expanded Their Presence’

French forces intervened in Mali, a former French colony, in 2013 to push back an extremist advance from the desert north, but the terrorists have since regrouped and expanded their presence into central Mali and the neighboring countries.

Some 4,500 French troops remain based in the wider Sahel, most of them in Mali. The United States also has hundreds of troops in the region.

NTD Photo
Chief of the General Staff of the French Armies General Francois Lecointre (L), arrives at the base of the Barkhane mission in Africa’s Sahel region, in Menaka, Mali on March 21, 2019. (Daphne Benoit/AFP/Getty Images)
NTD Photo
Chief of the General Staff of the French Armies Gen. Francois Lecointre (L), flanked by commander of the Barkane force Frederic Blachon (C), meets troops on the roof of a building in Menaka, Mali, on March 21, 2019. (Daphne Benoit/AFP/Getty Images)

Security Council ambassadors met with Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and other government officials to discuss the violence and the slow implementation of a 2015 peace agreement with non-ISIS armed groups.

“Clear sense of frustration among many Security Council members at pace of implementation of Mali Peace Agreement,” Britain’s representative on the mission, Stephen Hickey, wrote on Twitter. “Security Council prepared to impose sanctions on those who impede its implementation.”

By Tiemoko Diallo

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