WITNESSES SAY 20 KILLED IN AIR STRIKE IN CENTRAL MALI

Wed 06 January 2021:

France said it killed dozens of fighters in a weekend air raid in central Mali, while several villagers and a local group said up to 20 wedding guests were killed by fire from a helicopter.

The French military said “several dozens” of extremists were killed in a Sunday afternoon airstrike led by French fighter jets close to the village of Bounti. There was no immediate comment from the Malian government.

Villagers in Bounti said a lone helicopter opened fire in broad daylight on Sunday, sowing panic among a crowd gathered for a wedding.

“It was run for your lives,” resident Ahmadou Ghana said.

Another villager, Mady Dicko, added: “We were surprised by the intensity of the strike. The helicopter was flying very low.”

On Sunday, Tabital Pulakuu, an association that promotes the culture of Mali’s Fulani ethnic group, reported an “air strike that claimed the lives of at least 20 civilians” during a wedding.

A French military spokesman, Colonel Frederic Barbry, denied a connection between the raid and the wedding party, saying such a link “does not correspond to information collected prior to the air strike”.

The airstrike was part of a larger operation by French troops aiming at fighting Islamist extremists in Africa’s Sahel region. Several French soldiers were killed in Mali last week when an improvised explosive device hit their armored vehicle.

Guillaume Nguefa, the head of the human rights section of the UN mission in Mali, confirmed the incident but did not provide more details.

The village lies in the Mopti region, 600km (373 miles) from the Malian capital Bamako, where armed groups have a significant presence.

The region is the epicentre of a deadly military offensive that began in northern Mali in 2012 and then advanced into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, inflaming ethnic tensions along the way.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have died in the conflict and hundreds of thousands of people have had to flee their homes.