Mali’s President Urges End to Revenge Attacks After New Massacre
Mali’s President Urges End to Revenge Attacks After New Massacre
(Bloomberg) -- Mali’s President, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, urged citizens to refrain from violence as his government scrambled to deal with the fallout from an attack that left scores of people dead and raised the specter of widespread civil conflict.
Islamist militant insurgencies that have plagued the impoverished West African nation for seven years are increasingly stoking tension between farming communities and groups that traditionally herd cattle. On Sunday, at least 35 people in an ethnic Dogon village in the central Mopti region were killed in a single raid, marking the largest massacres since March, when 157 mostly ethnic Fulani herders were slaughtered.
Keita cut short a visit to Switzerland and was due to arrive home on Tuesday after issuing a statement urging people to refrain from reprisals and vowing to arrest the perpetrators. Initial reports that 95 people had been killed have been revised to at least 35, according to Mopti’s governor.
While his government earlier this year pledged to dismantle a Dogon militia it holds responsible for attacking and beheading Fulani villagers, the militia known as Dan Na Ambassagou said Monday it considered the latest raid a “declaration of war” and called on young men to join the “fight for the survival of the Dogon.”
The government already replaced several high-ranking army commanders in March, but has not been able to stop the surge in inter-communal fighting. Instead, it has so far tolerated the emergence of militias that claimed to defend local residents against jihadists - a decision that now appears to have backfired.
“The threshold of what’s intolerable has been reached and it’s time for a national upsurge,” Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the UN special representative to Mali, said in a statement late Monday. “This drama reminds us unfortunately that there are no good guys on one side and bad guys on the other in this spiral of violence.”
Violence has engulfed Mali’s central region in the past months despite the deployment of a 15,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping mission and a special French military force, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of troops and civilians. The UN mission in Mali is the most dangerous of all active UN operations currently, with almost 200 peacekeepers killed in bombings and ambushes.
To contact the reporters on this story: Katarina Hoije in Abidjan at khoije@bloomberg.net;Bokar Sangare in Bamako at bsangare1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Karl Maier at kmaier2@bloomberg.net, Pauline Bax, Hilton Shone
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