A separatist crew in Mali said an airstrike on a market in the nation’s north has killed at least 18 of us. Mali’s army said its attack targeted armed militants.
The Collective for the Defense of the Rights of the Azawad Folk, part of a Tuareg separatist coalition, said the attack took place 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Lerneb in the Timbuktu region.
Seven of us had been also injured in Sunday’s strike, the crew said in a statement late Monday, denouncing a “barbaric act from another age.”
Mali’s army said on X it carried out airstrikes on a “refuge” in the area and killed 11 “terrorists.”
The West African nation, along with neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for extra than a decade battled an insurgency fought by armed groups, including some allied with al-Qaida and the Islamic State crew.
Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russian mercenary objects for safety assistance instead. Since seizing vitality in 2021, interim president Assimi Goita has struggled to curb violence in Mali, whereas the army has has been accused of targeting civilians.
Last month, the Front for the Liberation of Azawad, the coalition of Tuareg separatist groups, accused the army and Russian mercenaries from the Wagner crew of “coldly executing” at least 24 of us in northern Mali.
A that you can imagine reason for the contradicting information about the latest attack can be that the military targeted militants in civilian-populated areas indiscriminately, said Rida Lyammouri, senior fellow at the Policy Heart for the Unusual South, a Moroccan think tank, adding that jihadi combatants are known to consult with markets to obtain presents.
“The Malian army may have deemed the targets significant ample to accept a certain degree of civilian casualties, but these would now now not be the primary goal,” he said.
Lyammouri said another explanation may perhaps be that each the army and separatists misrepresented the identities of those killed to bolster their narratives.
The army may perhaps point to it as combating extremism, whereas the separatists may perhaps allege human rights allegations, “legitimizing their goal of greater autonomy or separation from the Malian state.”
