An attack attributed to jihadists has claimed the lives of dozens of people, soldiers and civilians, in central Mali, sources in the region told AFP on Thursday.

The Armed Forces of Mali (AFM) limited themselves to announcing yesterday that a “terrorist” attack had been repelled on Tuesday in the camp of Farabuguwithout publishing any account.

However, a local elected official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for his safety, told AFP that “the jihadist attack on Farabugu claimed the lives of around sixty people, military and civilians».

He also spoke of missing persons. The camp fell into the hands of the jihadists, who then, in their usual modus operandi, quickly abandoned it, he added.

“If we add the dead military and civilians and the people who don’t know what happened, it makes us at least 62 peoplesaid a resident, who also asked not to be named. He emphasized that he does not know what happened to his two brothers. “I don’t know if they were killed, if they ran away or if they are hiding,” he explained.

Two local authority workers also spoke of a heavy toll. One referred to “dozens” of victims and added that Farabugu, a community of a few thousand inhabitants, was emptied.

The army simply acknowledged that there was an attack. His forces “romanticly returned” the fire they received, which “allowed a terrorist attack against the Farabugu camp to be repelled,” he said in a terse statement uploaded to social networking sites.

Over a decade of armed violence in the country

Central Mali is among the hotbeds of violence causing rivers of blood in Sahel. As in other parts of the country, gathering and verifying information is complicated by the difficulty of accessing remote locations and independent sources, against the background of the general deterioration of the security situation.

The regime of colonels, which seized power in a 2020 coup, asserts that it has gained the upper hand in the conflict with various armed organizations and is generally loathe to announce its losses.

Mali has been confronted for more than a decade, since 2012, by the action of organizations that pledge allegiance to either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, paramilitaries and criminal gangs. The security crisis is intertwined with a deep humanitarian and political crisis.

Farabugu is administratively under Nyono, an area that has been severely tested for years by the action of the Organization for the Support of Islam and Muslims (WIM, swears allegiance to Al-Qaeda), but also by paramilitary organizations formed mainly by traditional hunters of the Dozo tribe.

This community became a symbol in 2020 when it suffered a long siege by jihadists. Mali’s new strongman, Colonel Assimi Goita, who had just seized power in a coup a few weeks earlier, personally went to the area where the authorities were being tested to restore security.

The army returned to Farabugu. However, what caused a sensation next was the 2021 ceasefire agreement between UIM and the hunters. It was representative of local arrangements, which provide that the jihadists offer — relative — peace in exchange for the population paying taxes. But the agreement was called into question and violence flared up.