Armed groups committing atrocities in Mali: HRW

Mali is plagued by armed groups, making swaths of territory ungovernable, and UN peacekeepers have been kicked out.

Al-Qaeda-linked and warring ethnically-based armed groups are committing atrocities in Mali, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports.

The watchdog said in a report released on Wednesday that fighters from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (JNIM) and Dozo militia killed 45 people in separate attacks on villages in Central Mali in January. Mali has been plagued by such groups since 2015, but late last year, its transitional government ejected a UN peacekeeping mission.

On January 6, a Dozo armed group consisting mainly of ethnic Bambara killed 13 people and abducted 24 civilians in the village of Kalala, which has a predominantly Fulani population.

JNIM fighters, largely Fulani, attacked the villages of Ogota and Ouembe on January 27, killing at least 32 people, including three children, the report said. The attackers set fire to more than 350 homes and forced 2,000 people to flee.

The attacks, which occurred amid recurrent tit-for-tat killings and communal violence in central Mali, violate international humanitarian law and are apparent war crimes, HRW stressed.