Western powers and human rights organizations are demanding an investigation into the action of the army in Mali, a country in the northwest of the African continent, which has left more than 200 dead over the last week.
The number of victims is the government’s own, but in a report released this Tuesday (5) the NGO Human Rights Watch maintains that about 300 people were killed, with suspected participation of mercenaries from the Russian group Wagner in the massacre – which the Army denies.
The deaths took place between March 27 and 31 in Moura, a rural community with around 10,000 inhabitants in the central region of the country. The site has become a hotspot for radical Islamists operating in nearby countries, and the Malian government says the area is now a “terrorist fief.”
The Ministry of Defense confirmed, last Friday (1st), that the operation killed 203 people, classified as terrorists, and arrested another 51. civilian,” the government said.
Many of the deaths reportedly occurred after a shooting, in an operation in which the Army had to use a helicopter to pursue and “neutralize fleeing people”. The government denies having taken action aimed at killing Muslims in the region, as Humans Right Watch says, which called the episode the worst atrocity committed in a decade of armed conflict in the country.
The organization says it interviewed 27 people with knowledge of the deaths, including 19 witnesses. They said Malian troops, accompanied by Russian-speaking soldiers, arrived by helicopter and exchanged fire with Islamist militants, killing rebels, soldiers and civilians.
According to this account, the troops subsequently spread through the community and summarily executed a number of civilians. Then they gathered hundreds of unarmed people, many of them merchants who travel weekly to the city to sell groceries, and took them to the bank of a river. There, the men spent five days under the sun and were slowly, arbitrarily, killed at night. The bodies were piled up in three mass graves, witnesses told the NGO.
Human Rights Watch says, citing security sources in the country, that the operation would have involved 100 Russian-speaking soldiers. Witnesses also reported military personnel speaking a foreign language.
A merchant said he was drinking tea with his two brothers waiting for the local market to open when he heard gunshots. “Seven Russians approached and gestured for us to get up. There were no Malian soldiers. They searched our house, then took us to the east side of the village, near the river, where we found another 100 men,” the witness told NGO “Another group of Russians pointed to my brothers and another man. I thought they would be interrogated. [Os soldados] took them many meters away and executed them at close range.”
According to the NGO, the deaths come amid an increase in extrajudicial killings since late last year, both by Islamic radicals linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Great Sahara and by government security forces.
“Abuse by armed Islamist groups is in no way a justification for the deliberate killing of people in military custody,” says Corinne Dufka, HRW’s director in the Sahel region.
Most of the victims of the Malian army and allied troops, says the NGO, were men of the Peul ethnic group, also known as Fulani, formed mainly by herdsmen – Islamic radicals have tried to recruit members of these ethnic groups.
The Moura region is virtually under the control of Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda, according to residents, who have imposed taxes and threatened civilians who refuse to adhere to sharia law.
Since the beginning of the year, residents have reported to the organization an increase in the presence of white armed men who do not speak French, the country’s official language, and participate in military operations in cities in the central region.
Mali’s transitional government, which took over the country after a 2020 military coup, is fighting rebels across the country with the help of soldiers from the Russian Wagner group. Mali and Russia claim the men in the group are not mercenaries but trainers who help local troops with equipment brought in from Russia.
France, the country that colonized Mali until 1960, has engaged thousands of troops in military operations in the region for nearly a decade. This year, Paris said it would withdraw its men after bilateral relations deteriorated, in part also due to the arrival of Russian troops.
The country condemned last week’s massacre and called for an investigation. “Fighting terrorist groups operating in the Sahel cannot in any way justify human rights violations,” the Foreign Ministry said. “Indiscriminate violence against civilian populations only strengthens these groups [terroristas].”
Ned Price, a spokesman for the US Department of State, said that “reports of the conflicts illustrate the urgent need for Malian transitional authorities to provide safe, free and unrestricted access to the area where these trafficking events took place.” UK officials also called for an investigation by the United Nations.
