132 people killed in armed group attacks in Mali

Africa, News June 21, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

132 people were killed as a result of an armed group attack in the Mopti region, Mali’s government reported.

The government is suspecting rebel groups to be responsible for the attacks in the Mopti region. According to the government’s official statement, members of the Katiba Macina armed rebel group attacked at least three villages in the rural communes of Bankass, a town in central Mali, on the night of June 18.

The statement further added that some of the perpetrators have been identified. It said that civilians were “coldly killed by fighters of the Macina Katiba of Amadou Kouffa”, an organization affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

Most of the reported killings took place in the village of Diallassagou, while attacks on the two nearby villages, Diaweli and Dessagou, also resulted in the killings of several civilians.

Mali’s Mopti region and especially the communes of Bankass have been mired in severe insecurity in the wake of the country’s ongoing political, security, and economic crisis.

The Mayor of Bankass Moulaye Guindo spoke with the media after the incident and stated that “Investigators are on the spot today to find out exactly what happened.”

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali also confirmed the recent attacks through its official Twitter account stating that “attacks against civilians in the Bandiagara region (the area of central Mali) were perpetrated by extremist groups. These attacks have reportedly caused casualties and displacement of populations.”

In a separate incident on June 19, a UN Peacekeeper died as a result of the injuries sustained from an improvised bomb explosion. The head of the UN Mission to Mali, El-Ghassim Wane, said that since the beginning of 2022, several attacks have killed UN uniformed peacekeepers.

The central Sahel country of Mali has been facing a string of civilian massacres that government blames on the armed rebel groups. The violent spree that started in the north soon spread across the country as well as in neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso.

^{A column of the Malian Armed Forces (FAMA) pick-up trucks participate in a military operation against armed terrorist groups (GAT) with French Barkhane forces in Mali, Gourma (tri-border region), January 2021. (Image Credit: Frederic Petry/Hans Lucas via AFP)}

Mali was rocked by security setbacks in 2012 as groups linked with Al-Qaeda and ISIS started to attack civilian settlements, plunging the country into a deep security crisis.

Mali has been in a decade-long insurgency that has affected millions of its residents while deteriorating the country’s volatile situation of poverty even further. The French military had been present in Mali for a long time playing an important role in fighting the insurgents and keeping the situation under control. Being a former French colony and a francophone country of 20 million people, Mali has close ties with France in Europe.

In February 2022, however, French President Emanuel Macron announced the withdrawal of the French forces from Mali. French withdrawal from Mali leads to a breakdown of relations between many government factions leading to a further intensify dire situation.

According to some western sources, since the French withdrawal from Mali, the Malian armed forces have hired 1000 Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a private military company. However, the security situation against the armed rebel groups remains unchanged.