The alleged jihadists took target a transport vehicle in which civilians were. The attack has not been claimed by any of the many armed groups in the country.
Le Monde with AFP
The conflicts that tear Mali have made new victims. At least 30 people were killed, Friday, November 3, near Bandiagara, in the center of the country, in an attack perpetrated by individuals suspected of being jihadists.
“The civilians were in a transport vehicle. The passengers were machineway and the vehicle was burned. The state sent security forces on site,” said local authorities in the Mopti region to the ‘France Media Agency. An elected representative of Bandiagara confirmed this assessment and specified that among the victims were “children and women and missing”. The security forces were sent on the spot, according to the same sources.
In a statement broadcast Saturday by public television, the transition government announced a balance sheet of 31 dead and 17 wounded. It ensures that “all the measures will be taken to stop and punish the authors of this ignoble act”.
The attack has been claimed by any of the many armed groups in the country.
Thousands of victims since 2012
The Association for the Development of Bandiagara (ADB) condemned “a loose and criminal attack” and asked the authorities to make all the necessary arrangements to protect the populations and their property.
An intercommunity conflict is rampling in the Mopti region, the theater of the Friday attack. The tensions between Dogon sedentary and nomadic majority are recurrent because of the disputes related to fields and transhumance.
Security forces are also targets for regular attacks in armed groups. On October 7, sixteen soldiers were killed during the attack on a convoy of the Malian army between the localities of Koro and Bandiagara. It was then the most deadly attack on the Malian army since 19 August and the assault of a convoy on the road between Boni and Douentza, in the center of Mali, who had made seventeen dead .
Mali has been delivered since 2012 to group actions affiliated with Al-Qaida and the Organization Islamic State, as well as violence of all kinds perpetrated by self-proclaimed self-defense bandits and militias. Violence, parts of the North, spread to the center, then in Burkina Faso and Niger neighbors. They have made thousands of civilian and military deaths, and hundreds of thousands of displaced, despite the deployment of UN forces, French and African. Taking the power of the military in favor of a Putsch in 2020 in Mali did not stop the spiral of violence.