At least 12 people were killed Tuesday in an attack on several villages in central Mali plagued by jihadist and inter-community violence, the mayor of one of them, Sangha, told AFP on Thursday.
Read also: Mali: kidnapped opposition leader "is fine", negotiations for his release
" Fulani terrorists gathered four days ago in the forest (not far from the attacked villages) and on Tuesday they went on the attack," said Ali Dolo, mayor of this rural commune, contacted by phone. The attackers stole nearly 500 head of cattle, he added. The death toll was confirmed by a victim's cousin speaking on condition of anonymity and by an internal UN report. "Between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. (...) alleged Fulani armed men attacked several localities near the Dogon village of Tireli, approximately 30 km east of Bandiagara" , one of the main towns in the center, says the UN report consulted Thursday.
“They came to more than fifty motorcycles, two by two (on each motorcycle). So far, twelve bodies have been found , " said a victim's cousin, adding that six people are still missing. "What kills us is not the coronavirus but the war, " said Ali Dolo. Central Mali has been the scene of a large number of violence since 2015 and the appearance of a jihadist group led by the Peul preacher Amadou Koufa, who widely recruited from his community, and joined the Support Group for the Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel affiliated with Al-Qaeda, since its creation in 2017.
Attacks, often followed by reprisals, have multiplied. They took an intercommunity turn between the Peuls, mainly breeders, and the Bambara and Dogon ethnic groups, who mainly practice agriculture.