Category Archives: Mali

France under pressure to admit responsibility for Mali airstrike

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Paris has repeatedly dismissed UN report into attack that killed 19 wedding guests as not credible

France is facing growing calls to accept responsibility for an airstrike that killed 19 civilians at a wedding in a village in Mali in January, following the publication of a United Nations report into the attack.

The damning investigation by the UN released last month, its first into French military action, said the airstrike hit Bounti village on 3 January, killing 19 guests at the wedding and three militants.

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Ballaké Sissoko: picking up the pieces after US customs broke his kora

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Last February, Sissoko’s historic instrument was disassembled on a flight home to Paris. Bolstered by a new kora, his latest album revives their borderless journey

In the Malian language Bamanankan, djourou – the title of Ballaké Sissoko’s forthcoming album – means string. “It’s the string that connects me to others,” he says. For this master of the kora, it is also the string that broke.

Last February, Sissoko returned to Paris after a US tour with his trio 3MA to find that border officials in New York had dismantled his kora. The neck, bridge, strings and custom-built pickup had been removed from the body, made of calabash and parchment. The instrument was beyond repair, and made headlines around the world.

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Girl, two, dies after being rescued from migrant boat in Canaries

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Toddler from Mali has died in hospital after being resuscitated on a dock last week

A two-year-old girl from Mali who was rescued from a migrant boat and resuscitated on a dock in the Canary Islands last week has died in hospital, becoming the latest victim of the perilous Atlantic route from Africa to Europe.

The girl was one of 52 people travelling on a boat that had left the city of Dakhla in Western Sahara bound for the Spanish archipelago.

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Mali conflict: ‘It’s not about jihad or Islam, but justice’

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Camps for refugees are growing as old rivalries between Fulani herders and Dogon farmers are exacerbated in Mali’s war on Islamist militants

Mopti used to be a stopover for tourists on their way to the fabled Timbuktu, or to see the homes of the Dogon people cut into the yellow cliffs of Bandiagara. The Malian city, which is known for its grand mosque and rock-salt markets, lies where the Niger and Bani rivers meet. When the rivers flood, the town is turned into a series of islands.

But the visitors and their cameras are gone, and the 4x4s that used to transport them replaced with those bearing logos of humanitarian organisations, as the Mali government struggles to root out a strengthening Islamist movement that has been expanding from the north of the country since 2015.

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Mars, Nestlé and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US

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Chocolate companies are among the defendants named in a lawsuit brought by former child workers in Ivory Coast

Eight children who claim they were used as slave labour on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast have launched legal action against the world’s biggest chocolate companies. They accuse the corporations of aiding and abetting the illegal enslavement of “thousands” of children on cocoa farms in their supply chains.

Nestlé, Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Mars, Olam, Hershey and Mondelēz have been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington DC by the human rights firm International Rights Advocates (IRA), on behalf of eight former child slaves who say they were forced to work without pay on cocoa plantations in the west African country.

The plaintiffs, all of whom are originally from Mali and are now young adults, are seeking damages for forced labour and further compensation for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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Wedding guests killed in Mali airstrike, local sources say

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French forces were in area but say they attacked ‘fully-identified armed terrorist group’

More than 20 people, including children, were killed in airstrikes during a wedding ceremony in a remote desert area of central Mali, according to local sources.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attacks but the reports emerged as French military sources said its forces in the country had carried out an airstrike in the area on Sunday that killed “dozens of fighters” from Islamist groups.

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At least 100 die in Niger attacks blamed on jihadists

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Attacks on two villages were launched just as first-round results were announced in presidential election

“Terrorists” have killed around 100 people in two villages in western Niger, the latest in a string of civilian massacres that have rocked the jihadist-plagued Tillaberi region, a local mayor has said.

The attacks on the villages of Tchoma Bangou and Zaroumadareye occurred on Saturday just as first-round presidential election results were announced.

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Last French hostage in the world released by jihadists in Mali

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Authorities confirm release of Sophie Pétronin along with two Italian captives and Malian politician

Authorities in Mali have confirmed the release of an elderly French aid worker, two Italian captives and a top Malian politician, all believed to have been held by jihadists.

A tweet on Thursday said that French woman Sophie Pétronin, 75, and Soumaïla Cissé, 70, were on their way to the capital Bamako.

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Kidnapped Mali politician and French aid worker freed

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Jihadists abducted Soumaïla Cissé in March, while Sophie Pétronin was taken in 2016

Jihadists in Mali have freed a prominent opposition leader who was kidnapped earlier this year and a French aid worker held captive for almost four years, in a major exchange of prisoners with the country’s new transition government.

Soumaïla Cissé, a 70-year-old former presidential candidate, was kidnapped in March while campaigning in his home town in the restive north of the country.

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Mali’s military junta agrees to cut transition period to 18 months

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Coup leaders under pressure to appoint civilian president to prepare country for elections

Mali’s military junta, which staged a coup last month, has agreed to an 18-month transition government led by a military or civilian leader that would pave the way to elections.

Three days of consultations with leaders of political and civil society groups laid out a charter for the transition on Saturday, which will also include a vice-president and transitional council that will serve as the national assembly. The president and vice-president will be chosen by a group of people appointed by the junta, according to Moussa Camara, spokesman for the talks.

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Mali’s military junta open talks on transition to civilian rule

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Country’s deposed president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, flying out to UAE for medical treatment

Mali’s military junta began talks with opposition groups on Saturday on its promise to hand power back to civilians, after mounting pressure from neighbouring countries in the weeks since it overthrew the nation’s leader.

The West African country has long been plagued by instability, a simmering jihadist revolt, ethnic violence and endemic corruption, prompting a clique of rebel soldiers to detain the president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, last month.

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Mali’s new rulers urged to ensure rapid restoration of democracy

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US calls on military to reject violence and work towards return of constitutional government

Mali’s new military rulers have come under intense pressure to ensure a rapid restoration of democracy following the coup that brought them to power overnight.

There were reports on Wednesday that the officers who led the coup met Mahmoud Dicko, a conservative cleric with a large popular following and de facto leader of the recent protest movement in Mali, during the afternoon, suggesting they may be seeking to work with political actors in the unstable west African country.

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Mali soldiers celebrate after ousting president in military coup – video report

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Mali's new military rulers have vowed to restore confidence 'between governed and governors' after a coup on Tuesday that led to the president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, announcing his resignation, as well as the dissolution of the government and the national assembly. Keïta came to power in 2013 and won a second term in 2018. But there had been rising anger at government incompetence, endemic corruption and a deteriorating economy

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Covid to displace more than a million across the Sahel, new tool predicts

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Software hailed as a ‘game-changer’ in providing early warning for humanitarian relief efforts as virus fuels conflict

Coronavirus is predicted to push more than 1 million people from their homes across the Sahel, creating havoc in an already highly fragile region, according to new forecasting software.

Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria in west Africa are predicted to see displacement as a result of the increasing conflict, unemployment and human rights abuses brought on by fallout from the coronavirus, the analytical tool developed by the humanitarian group Danish Refugee Council (DRC) has found.

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Mali protesters turn to populist imam Mahmoud Dicko to end cycle of corruption

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Mahmoud Dicko has emerged as a key player in a country in crisis. But is he a zealot or a pragmatist?

A fragile calm has returned to Bamako. The debris has been cleared from the streets and the barricades around the Salam mosque in the neighbourhood of Badalabougou are gone. For the moment, a bloody confrontation between security forces and demonstrators in the capital of Mali appears to have been averted.

But the pause is likely to be temporary. Leaders of the landlocked west African nation’s protest movement have promised to go “right to the bitter end” to force through dramatic political change, after six weeks of rising unrest. “We will wage this battle until we bring in a new democratic era in Mali. We have lost too many killed to retreat now,” Mohamed Salia Touré, a prominent protest leader and young politician, told the Observer.

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Extremist fighter’s groundbreaking sex slavery trial opens at ICC

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Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud accused of torture and extrajudicial punishments

The trial of a former Islamic militant who allegedly forced hundreds of women into sexual slavery has opened at the international criminal court, where he has been accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and in a first, persecution on the grounds of gender.

Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, 42, was transferred to the court’s custody more than two years ago from Mali, where he had been held by local authorities for more than a year.

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‘A drastic loss’: Satellite imagery reveals Mali’s farmers forced off land by militias

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Attacks by Islamist groups and rising ethnic tension in the Mopti region have led to life-threatening disruption to farming practices

A surge in fighting in central Mali has forced hundreds of villagers from farmland they depend on and could leave them without enough food to survive this year, according to a study of satellite imagery by the UN’s World Food Programme.

More than half the number of violent attacks by armed groups against Mali civilians last year were recorded in the Mopti region, largely targeting people who survive on land or livestock.

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Militant crackdown in Sahel leads to hundreds of civilian deaths – report

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Amnesty records 200 state killings and forced disappearances in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, state members of internationally-backed G5 group

Hundreds of civilians have been killed by their own governments in Africa’s Sahel region since countries pledged a surge against militant groups at a regional meeting held by France in January.

Amnesty International said on Wednesday that it had documented 200 cases of unlawful state killings and forced disappearances in February and March in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which are members of the internationally backed G5 force set up to fight militants in the Sahel.

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French forces kill al-Qaida’s north Africa chief in Mali

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Abdelmalek Droukdel was one of the Maghreb’s most experienced Islamist militants

French forces in northern Mali have killed al-Qaida’s north Africa (AQMI) chief, a key Islamist fighter whom its forces had been hunting for more than seven years.

“On 3 June, French army forces with the support of their local partners, killed al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s emir, Abdelmalek Droukdel, and several of his closest collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali,” the French armed forces minister, Florence Parly, wrote on Twitter on Friday.

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West Africa facing food crisis as coronavirus spreads

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Pandemic adds to jihadi and climate change threats to present ‘immense challenge’ for region

More than 43 million people in west Africa are likely to be in urgent need of food assistance in the coming months – double initial estimates – as the Covid-19 outbreak accelerates, the World Food Programme has said.

Food insecurity could also double this year to affect 265 million people across the continent; west Africa, where the outbreak of the virus is most severe, is of increasing concern.

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