Dozens of bodies discovered in Mali

Dozens of bodies belonging to the Fula ethnic group were discovered in Mali near an army camp after civilian round ups, says Le Monde on April 25th.

The bodies were found a few days after the army and Russian paramilitary group Wagner arrested dozens of civilians, mainly from the Fula people community, according to local witnesses. Fula people live in West Africa and are one of the many ethnic groups in Mali.

On April 12th, soldiers from the Malian army and Russian mercenaries arrested dozens of men at the local Sebabougou market (western Mali), to transfer them to Kawla military camp, reported two survivors that have escaped to Mauritania.

The infighting between local jihadist groups and local authorities continues under the new junta in power, in spite of the junta’s decision to expel French force and turn to Russia for military support.

A first witness told AFP the men were first questioned on their relationship with jihadists.

“They flogged people”, he says, adding that Russian paramilitary soldiers brought him outside with others to execute them.

“White soldiers fired machine guns at us. I fell down like the others. They then hurried away. Though I was not dead, I lay there for hours. I saw around 7o bodies”.

A second witness says he also fled the country after escaping death: “I was among those that stayed in the camp while they were taking others outside to kill them.”

A local communitarian organisation reported to AFP under condition of anonymity to have a list of 65 missing victims. Most of them couldn’t be identified, they say, because of the state of the corpses. Fula people have regularly been targeted in reprisals of jihadist attacks, due to the belief that they support local jihadist militias.

A third witness said he returned to the camp to look for his relatives.

“What we saw was appalling: Bodies, people that were killed, civilians,” he says, claiming he survived because he was sick on the day the round ups happened.

In the past ten years, the region has been a theatre of war, with Al-Qaïda-affiliated groups and the Malian government vying for control. In March 2024, around thirty Malian soldiers had been killed in a violent attack attributed to the one of these terrorist groups.

Le Monde, Maghrebi