The United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission, MINUSMA, on Wednesday said at least 50 civilians were killed during a military operation conducted by Mali’s army and supporting foreign troops on April 19, reported The Reuters.
According to the UN report, he alleged massacre took place in Douentza’s Hombori municipality, after a Mali military convoy hit an improvised explosive device.
“At least 50 civilians (including a woman and a child) were killed and more than 500 others arrested,” the MINUSMA said in a quarterly report on human rights violations that took place between April and June.
The report did not specify the nationality of the foreign troops accompanying local military.
Notably, the UN has repeatedly accused Malian soldiers of killing innocent civilians and suspected militants during their decade-long fight against groups linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State.
Both Mali and Russia have previously said the Wagner group is not made of mercenaries but trainers helping local troops with equipment bought from Russia.
Mali’s military government, which took power in a 2020 coup, has been battling Islamist insurgents with the help of private military contractors belonging to Russia’s Wagner group.
Mali’s authorities banned UN investigators from a site where Malian troops and suspected Russian fighters allegedly executed around 300 civilian men during a military operation in March.
The Western countries describe them as mercenaries from the pro-Kremlin Wagner group. The presence of the Russian troops has been a key factor in France’s decision to withdraw its military forces from Mali – a former colony that it has supported in a decade-long fight against an extremist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
The last French soldier in Mali under the long-running Barkhane anti-extremist mission left the country on August 15.
In April, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Malian forces killed about 300 people, most of them ethnic Fulanis, in Moura in central Mali in March.
