Fighting has been raging for three weeks in the Ménaka region of northern Mali, near the border with Niger. The armed groups of the MSA and the Gatia, signatories of the 2015 peace agreement, are struggling with the jihadists of the EIGS, the local branch of the Islamic State group. The jihadists do not hesitate to attack civilians, there is talk of several hundred victims and thousands of displaced persons. The Malian army does not take part in these fights. On the other hand, it is in this context that the Malian army is again accused of exactions against civilians in Ansongo, between Gao and Ménaka: displaced people, fifteen people, who were fleeing the fighting.
Fleeing their commune of Talataye, they had arrived in Ansongo less than 24 hours ago. Malian army soldiers arrested them on Saturday in a building in the so-called “hydraulic” district, where displaced people arriving from combat zones are gathered.
That same morning, a military post in Ansongo had suffered a terrorist attack. The Malian army indicated that two jihadists had been neutralized during the response. A Malian soldier reportedly died of his injuries, according to security and civilian sources.
Should the descent of the soldiers on the site hosting the displaced be understood as an act of reprisal?
Beaten and tied up in front of their wives and children, and in front of other witnesses, the fifteen men have, in any case, never reappeared.
This is what many local sources indicate – relatives of the families, civilian community notables, and armed groups signatories of the peace agreement. Some of these sources even specify the military unit in question and the name of the lieutenant who heads it.
According to these sources, the fifteen arrested civilians were executed the same day, and buried in a mass grave to the east of the city. Some sources say that three or four other people, arrested at another time, suffered the same fate.
Asked by RFI, neither the Malian army nor the Malian Ministry of Defense responded.