A soldier of the Barkhane force (image illustration). – MICHELE CATTANI / AFP
At Mali , the French army is accused of having killed civilians who participated in a wedding party, during a strike against jihadists , Sunday in the center country. Messages have proliferated on social networks since Sunday on the events in the village of Bounti, one of the main hotbeds of violence in this region plunged into turmoil. Villagers interviewed by AFP spoke of shooting from an unidentified helicopter they said during a wedding. They mentioned up to twenty deaths.
Silence of the Malian authorities
The French staff refuted these claims. A patrol of fighter planes “neutralized” dozens of jihadists previously spotted after an intelligence operation lasting several days, he told AFP. “The information relating to a marriage does not correspond to the observations made,” he said.
The silence observed until then by the Malian civil and military authorities as well as the French armed forces has left the field since Sunday to a flood of speculation, very difficult to verify in a remote area whose access is made very complicated by the reputedly strong presence of jihadists.
Offensive air operations in Mali are mainly carried out by the Malian army and the French force Barkhane . Villagers contacted on the spot reported a helicopter strike in broad daylight causing panic in a crowd assembled according to them for a wedding.
“No doubt” for the army
This “was the run for your life. I found myself in the bush but lost two brothers, ”said Ahmadou Ghana. In all, 19 people were killed and several others seriously injured, he added. “We were surprised by the intensity of the strike. The helicopter was flying very low, to the point where we thought it was going to fly over the village, ”Mady Dicko said.
From Sunday, Tabital Pulakuu, an association for the promotion of culture
of the Peuls , one of the Malian ethnic groups, reported an “air strike (having ) cost the lives of at least 20 civilians ”during a marriage. “There can be no doubts and ambiguity, there was no marriage. It is a strike carried out after a particularly formal and multi-party process on a fully identified terrorist armed group, after a cross-checking of information, attitudes, posture, on a characterized area, “a French military source told AFP. close to the file. The region of Mopti, where Bounti is, at some 600 kilometers from the capital Bamako, is one of the main centers of violence from the north in 600 and which have spread since 2012 to the south of the country, but also to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.