134 Fulani Herders Killed by Gunmen in Central Mali, Worst Violence Yet

134 Fulani Herders Killed by Gunmen in Central Mali, Worst Violence Yet
Map shows Ogossagou in Mali, Africa. (Screenshot/Google Maps)
Reuters
3/24/2019
Updated:
3/24/2019

BAMAKO—Gunmen killed at least 134 Fulani herders in central Mali on Saturday, March 23, a local mayor said, the deadliest such attack in recent times in a region reeling from worsening ethnic and terrorist violence.

The assaults on the villages of Ogossagou and Welingara took place as a U.N. Security Council mission visited Mali seeking solutions to the violence that killed hundreds of civilians last year and is spreading across West Africa’s Sahel region.

Moulaye Guindo, mayor of the nearby town of Bankass, said armed men, dressed as traditional Donzo hunters, encircled and attacked Ogossagou at about 4 a.m.

“We are provisionally at 134 bodies recovered by the gendarmes,” Guindo told Reuters by telephone from Ogossagou.

He said another nearby Fulani village, Welingara, had also been attacked, causing “a number” of deaths, but he did not yet know how many.

Security sources said the dead included pregnant women, children, and the elderly.

Col. Gabriel Soubrier (L) from the Barkhane mission in Africa's Sahel region, speaks with Anderamboukane prefect Moussa Diallo (C) and Menaka region governor Daouda Maiga (R) at the military base of Malian Army forces (Fama) in Anderamboukane, Menaka region, on March 22, 2019. (Agnes Coudurier/AFP/Getty Images)
Col. Gabriel Soubrier (L) from the Barkhane mission in Africa's Sahel region, speaks with Anderamboukane prefect Moussa Diallo (C) and Menaka region governor Daouda Maiga (R) at the military base of Malian Army forces (Fama) in Anderamboukane, Menaka region, on March 22, 2019. (Agnes Coudurier/AFP/Getty Images)

One Ogossagou resident, who asked not to be identified, said the attack appeared to be in retaliation for an al Qaeda affiliate’s claim of responsibility on Friday for a raid last week that killed 23 soldiers.

That group said that raid was payback for violence by Mali’s army and militiamen against the Fulani.

Terrorist groups linked to al Qaeda and ISIS have exploited ethnic rivalries in Mali and its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger in recent years to boost recruitment and render vast swathes of territory virtually ungovernable.

Chief of the General Staff of the French Armies Gen. Francois Lecointre (L), flanked by commander of the Barkane force Frederic Blachon (C), meets troops on the roof of a building in Menaka, Mali, on March 21, 2019. (Daphne Benoit/AFP/Getty Images)
Chief of the General Staff of the French Armies Gen. Francois Lecointre (L), flanked by commander of the Barkane force Frederic Blachon (C), meets troops on the roof of a building in Menaka, Mali, on March 21, 2019. (Daphne Benoit/AFP/Getty Images)

French forces intervened in Mali, a former French colony, in 2013 to push back an extremist advance from the desert north, but the terrorists have since regrouped and expanded their presence into central Mali and the neighboring countries.

Some 4,500 French troops remain based in the wider Sahel, most of them in Mali. The United States also has hundreds of troops in the region.

Chief of the General Staff of the French Armies Gen. Francois Lecointre (L), arrives at the base of the Barkhane mission in Africa's Sahel region, in Menaka, Mali on March 21, 2019. (Daphne Benoit/AFP/Getty Images)
Chief of the General Staff of the French Armies Gen. Francois Lecointre (L), arrives at the base of the Barkhane mission in Africa's Sahel region, in Menaka, Mali on March 21, 2019. (Daphne Benoit/AFP/Getty Images)

Security Council ambassadors met with Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and other government officials on Friday evening to discuss the violence and the slow implementation of a 2015 peace agreement with non-ISIS armed groups.

“Clear sense of frustration among many Security Council members at pace of implementation of Mali Peace Agreement,” Britain’s representative on the mission, Stephen Hickey, wrote on Twitter. “Security Council prepared to impose sanctions on those who impede its implementation.”

By Tiemoko Diallo