BAMAKO: The death toll from Saturday’s attack by gunmen on villagers in central Mali has risen to 157, a government spokesman said, confirming it as one of the worst recent atrocities in a country beset by ethnic violence.

The attack, in which women and children were burned in their homes, marked an escalation in violence between Dogon hunters and Fulani herders that killed hundreds of civilians last year and is spreading across Africa’s Sahel, the region between the Sahara to the north and the continent’s savannas to the south.

“The official death toll is 157,” government spokesman Amadou Kotia said late on Tuesday. Officials on Saturday said that about 134 had been killed, though they expected that number to rise.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, said this week that the crimes may fall under the court’s jurisdiction and that a delegation will be sent to Mali. A UN Security Council mission was already visiting the former French colony to seek solutions to the violence when the attack took place.

An official from a nearby town said on Saturday that armed men, dressed as traditional Dogon hunters, attacked villages populated by Fulani herders. The Dogon suspect the Fulani of harbouring Islamist extremists, charges the Fulani deny.

The attack came less than a week after an assault by jihadists on an army post killed at least 23 soldiers, also in Mali’s central region. That attack was claimed by an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita responded to the attack by replacing two generals and disbanding an anti-jihadist vigilante group called Dan Na Amassagou, whose Dogon fighters were suspected of being behind the massacre.

The group has denied its members were involved and rejected the government’s dissolution.

“We will continue to exert our activities as per usual, ensuring the protection of populations until the state decides to live up to its security role,” Dan Na Amassagou spokesman Marcelin Guinguere told Reuters. He said the attack was carried out by Fulani-led jihadists disguised as Dogon.

Jihadist groups linked to Al Qaeda and IS have exploited ethnic rivalries in Mali and its neighbours Burkina Faso and Niger in recent years to boost recruitment.

Terror stalks massacre village

Eleven-year-old Amy raises her left arm to show where a bullet grazed her side, and from deep within her, a boundless distress comes out in great sobs.

The girl’s life was plunged into hell on Saturday when gun- and machete-toting men entered her village in central Mali, set to kill everyone from her community, the Fulani.

“Our fear here is that they will come back and kill all those who didn’t die. We are really afraid,” the child says. Amy says she lost several members of her family in the massacre at Ogossagou, a village in the Bankass district near the border with Burkina Faso.

Homes in the village have been put to the torch, and rotting animal carcasses litter the ground. The stench fills the air.

Near a well stands a mound of sand that witnesses described as a mass grave holding about 40 of the estimated 160 people who were murdered.

“We hauled four bodies out of this well, including that of a child aged just seven years old,” a health worker said. On the ground were pieces of the Real Madrid football jersey that the child had worn.

“We heard gunfire” at around 5am, said cattle farmer Boubar Toure. “The attackers went directly to the home of the village chief,” added Hamadou Belco Barry. Barry said they murdered the village chief in front of his mother, whom they then killed.

They then attacked other members of his family, he said. “They threw grenades in — there were men, women and children in them, one of whom was aged less than three,” a tearful witness said, pointing to a mud-walled home.

One of the assailants took up a position outside the house and chopped down any who tried to flee with his machete, he said.

In another part of the village, traces of black smoke scar the walls of several huts. This was where the village’s marabout, or traditional medicine man, Bara Sekou Issa, was slain along with his family.

One of his relatives, who says he survived the bloodbath, stands alongside children in rags, all of them walled in by silence. One of them, wearing an ochre-coloured turban, lost his mother and father, the villagers say.

“These children that you see are deeply traumatised,” a local official told AFP, seeking to remain anonymous. “We don’t have any means to look after them.” He points to a 12-year-old boy who, according to local people, has not uttered a word since Saturday.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2019