Hunt for attackers in Mali after 100 villagers killed in bloody Sunday massacre
- Appears to be a reprisal attack, marking the second such incident this year
- Survivor tells of people having their throats cut and being disembowelled
The United Nations in Mali called for nationwide efforts to end a “spiral of violence” after nearly 100 people were killed in a gruesome overnight attack on a village.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Sunday’s massacre, targeting a village inhabited by the Dogon community, bore the hallmarks of tit-for-tat ethnic attacks that have claimed hundreds of lives.
It came less than three months after nearly 160 members of the Fulani ethnic group were slaughtered by a group identified as Dogon.
“This country cannot be led by a cycle of revenge, and vendetta,” Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita told ORTM public television from Switzerland, where he said he was cutting short an official visit.
He called on Malians to come together to “allow our nation to survive, because this is a question of survival.”
Local officials in Koundou district, where the Sobane-Kou village was attacked, said 95 people were killed, their bodies burned and others were still missing.
The government, giving a provisional toll, said 95 people had been killed, 19 were missing, numerous farm animals had been slaughtered and homes had been torched.