Ongoing terrorist attacks and fighting in Mali

According to reports by the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), there are ongoing clashes and terrorist attacks in northern Mali. “Safety for the civilian population is still a fiction, even after the Bundeswehr joined the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSMA. Meanwhile, the blue helmets have a robust mandate to defend the civilian population, but there are still civilians and soldiers getting killed in terrorist attacks almost every day,” said the STP’s Africa consultant, Ulrich Delius, in Göttingen on Thursday. “The deployment of ‘Tiger’-helicopters, as planned by Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, will not be enough to change the situation. The MINUSMA peacekeeping force is disorganized and overchallenged with the aim of securing peace in the Tuareg region around the town of Kidal.”

During the past three weeks, there have been three serious clashes between warring Tuareg groups in the region of Kidal. At least 36 people lost their lives in clashes before the end of July, and it is not yet certain how many people got killed in the recent wave of violence. The clashes between the Tuareg movement CMA and the pro-government Gatia militia have now been going on for one and a half days – and both sides are accusing each other of having started the violence. On Saturday, five people got killed in clashes between Tuareg and Arab militias close to the border to Mauritania.

Islamist terrorist groups continue to spread violence as well. Thus, the bodies of five Malian soldiers were recovered from the River Niger on Wednesday. They had been killed in a raid on an army convoy on Sunday. On the same day, a peacekeeper from Chad got killed and five UN soldiers were injured when they drove over a mine. There was another terrorist attack on a UN patrol on Sunday, resulting in material damage.

“It is quite common for terrorist groups to carry out attacks on mayors,” reported Delius. Thus, a gunman tried to kill the village headman of Gossi last Sunday. One of his relatives got killed, and two people were wounded. Two days later, there was a bomb attack in the village of Karena, in which the attackers tried to murder the mayor’s aunt. They failed to hit her, but his nephew was seriously injured. Also last Friday, the village Koiratoo in the region of Timbuktu was looted.

Header Photo: Bradley Watson via Flickr