BAMAKO: Suspected jihadists killed more than 30 Tuaregs, including women and children, on Mali’s northeastern border with Niger, several sources said on Saturday as the second such attack in two days stoked fears of widespread unrest.

The former Tuareg rebel group MSA and tribal leaders said the massacre occurred on Friday, a day after another attack by gunmen on motorbikes had left 12 people dead outside the town of Anderamboukane, which is also in the same area.

“There have been 43 deaths in two days, all civilians, from the same community,” tribal leader Sidigui Ag Hamadi told AFP from the regional capital Menaka.

“Our fighters are destroying their bases and wiping them out. They are targeting innocent civilians,” he added, saying he viewed the bloodletting as a reprisal for attacks on jihadists by armed Tuareg groups.

The group urged the governments of Mali and Niger to take steps to ensure that “an immediate end is put to these abominable crimes” and added that it would “not give in to any intimidation.”

Two weeks ago, the UN’s MINUSMA peacekeeping operation said they had received “very serious” information that “summary executions of at least 95 people” had occurred during anti-jihadist operations in the northeastern Menaka region carried out by “a coalition of armed groups” including MSA and Gatia.

France intervened militarily in Mali in 2013 to help government forces drive Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists out of the north.

But large tracts of the country remain lawless despite a peace accord signed with ethnic Tuareg leaders in mid-2015 aimed at isolating the jihadists.

The violence has also spil­led over into both Burkina Faso and Niger.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2018