Armed men on motorcycles have killed at least 27 civilians in central Mali in three attacks on ethnic Dogon farming villages in less than 24 hours, local officials said on Thursday.
Central Mali has been ravaged in recent years by ethnic reprisal killings, as recriminations between Fulani herding and Dogon farming communities over violence compound long-standing grievances.Local officials told Reuters news agency they believed the three attacks, between Tuesday night and Wednesday evening, were carried out by people claiming to be defending Fulani against rival Dogon.
"We were surprised by the attack on the village of Tille. Seven were killed, all Dogons, some of them burned alive," said Yacouba Kassogue, the deputy mayor of Doucombo, the municipality in which Tille is located.
Attacks on villages in the neighbouring areas of Bankass and Koro killed another 20 civilians, most of them shot or burned to death, local officials said.
A spokesman for Mali's army was not immediately available for comment. The army has been criticised by rights groups and residents for failing to protect civilians in central Mali.
Increasing violence
Violence between the Dogon and Fulani has compounded an already dire security situation in Mali's semi-arid and desert regions, which are used as a base by armed groups with ties to al-Qaeda and the ISIL (ISIS) group.
The Fulani are primarily cattle breeders and traders, while the Dogon are traditionally sedentary farmers.Last year, the United Nations mission in Mali (MINUSMA) announced it recorded "at least 488 deaths" in attacks on Fulanis in the central regions of Mopti and Segou.
In the bloodiest raid, about 160 Fulani villagers were slaughtered in March last year at Ogossagou, near the border with Burkina Faso, by suspected Dogon hunters.
MINUSMA said since January 2018, armed Fulanis had "caused 63 deaths" among the civilians in the Mopti region.
MINUSMA has been operating in Mali since 2013, which ranks as the most dangerous UN mission, with 125 peacekeepers killed in attacks since deployment.
The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a consultancy that tracks political violence, says it recorded nearly 300 civilian deaths in Mali in the first three months of 2020, a 90 percent increase over the previous quarter.
At least 40 people, including nine soldiers, have been killed in three separate incidents in Mali.
Thirty-one were killed when gunmen attacked a village in central Mali, burning houses, crops and livestock.
A group of eight soldiers also died in an ambush, while another was killed during an attack on a military camp in the Gao region.
Mali has been blighted by instability since 2012 when an Islamist rebellion broke out in the north.
The village of Ogossagou, where one of Friday's attacks took place, is mostly home to Fulanis, a largely-Muslim ethnic group who traditionally work as herders.Other ethnic groups in Mali - including the Dogon community - accuse the Fulani of being linked to jihadi groups operating across the Sahel region.These accusations have fuelled inter-ethnic violence in recent years.
Last March, 160 people were killed in another attack at Ogossagou, which authorities blamed on a Dogon militiaThat attack led to several protests over perceived inaction by the government, and Mali's prime minster at the time, Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga, later resigned.No one has claimed responsibility for the latest incident, but village chief Aly Ousmane Barry told local media that the gunmen struck several hours after government troops had withdrawn from the area.
In a separate incident, Malian security forces said on Twitter that they had sustained "material damage" during an ambush in the village of Bintia, which killed eight soldiers and injured four others.
A ninth soldier was killed in another attack at a camp in Mondoro, which is regularly targeted by militants.
