BAMAKO, Mali — At least 13 civilians were killed in an overnight drone strike by Mali’s military earlier this week near the border with Mauritania, local human rights activists and a separatist armed group said Wednesday.
The Malian military said in a statement Wednesday that it had targeted terrorists “gathered under cover.”
Mali has been plagued for over a decade by al-Qaida-linked militants, including the JNIM alliance, and fighters affiliated with the Islamic State group, as well as a Tuareg separatist rebellion in the north.
“They had taken care to hide their motorcycles in an isolated location separate from their gathering place,” the military statement said. “After confirming the target, the position was successfully struck.”
A local human rights official said a Tuareg camp was bombed overnight Sunday into Monday in the town of Hassi Laghdaf near the border with Mauritania. “The bombs struck two tents and killed 13 people in their sleep, including women and children,” Tilla Ag Zeini, secretary-general of the Kal Akal Association, said.
Ag Zeini said the motorcycles belonged to a family of civilians from the Tuareg community, which he described as “peaceful.”
Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesperson for the Azawad Liberation Front — the armed separatist group in northern Mali — posted images on social media allegedly showing what remained of the tents after the attack, along with a list of people reportedly killed in the strikes. The Associated Press could not immediately verify the photos.
Malian armed forces and their allies have responded to mounting attacks by Islamist and separatist armed groups with abusive counterinsurgency operations in central and northern Mali that often harm civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report earlier this month.
It added that all sides of the conflict “are committing grave laws-of-war violations” and that “civilians are bearing the brunt of the Mali junta’s failure to rein in its abusive forces and allies.”
The landlocked country is part of the Sahel, a vast strip of land south of the Sahara Desert that has become the epicenter of extremist violence in recent years.
