Mali Deploys the Military as Survivors Recall Bloodshed
By Neo Sithole
Mali has deployed a contingent as an attempt to reinforce security following a spate of violent attacks in villages.
The attackers behind the latest attack to have hit central Mali identified victims one by one before executing then, survivors have said.
Monday's attack on the Gangafani and Yoro villages in the Mopti region was the last in a cycle of apparent tit-for-tat violence between the Dogon and Fulani communities.
At least 38 people were killed in the villages where survivors and officials say Fulani gunmen arrived by motorbike before attacking villagers in "revenge" for suspicions that they had collaborated with the Malian army.
Abdoulaye Goro, a security guard, had been travelling by truck to his father's funeral near the two villages when about 40 armed men intercepted the vehicle and forced the passengers into the bush
"They did identity checks and they only looked for the people from Yoro and Gangafani, and all those who were from those two villages were set apart,"
Goro said.
"They killed them in front of us, with rifles, and released us afterward."
The raids followed a massacre of dozens of people earlier this month in another Dogon village, Sobane Da.
That attack came months after suspected Dogon militiamen in late March killed more than 150 Fulani in two villages in central Mali, one of the worst acts of bloodshed in the country's recent history.
Mali's government said on Wednesday the army had dispatched a contingent to reinforce security and protect property in the Gangafani and Yoro villages, near the border with Burkina Faso.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called for restraint in order to end the "vicious circle of violence".
"As our teams prepare to provide emergency assistance to the survivors of Sobane Da, we have learned that other villages in the Mopti region also suffered attacks, causing a large number of casualties,"
Jean-Nicolas Marti, the ICRC head of delegation for Mali, said in a statement to Al Jazeera.
"We've now seen four major attacks since the beginning of the year, on top of daily violence. Our colleagues on the ground see an overwhelming amount of need and remain determined to support the victims of the violence, first and foremost through the provision of medical care."
Ethnic tensions in central Mali surged after an armed group led by preacher Amadou Koufa emerged in 2015 and recruited mainly from among the Fulanis. Clashes increased with Dogons and Bambaras who formed their own self-defence militias.
President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita appealed for an end to revenge attacks after he visited the site of the Sobane Da massacre.
But despite military help from France and the United Nations, Mali's government is struggling to calm violence that began in the north of the country in 2012, sparked by rebel fighters and Tuareg militias, while groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) have used central and northern Mali as a launch pad for attacks across the Sahel region and stoke tensions among different communities.
A week ago, in Mali, dozens of people from one village were killed in an escalating conflict between farmers and herders.
Militias linked to Fulani herders and Dogon farmers are behind a series of attacks on each other’s communities, over the past three years.
The government is accused of arming Dogon militias, which many believe has led to the escalating violence between the two communities
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