Mali: Men Dressed in Military Kill Villagers, Set Houses on Fire

Twenty people in Mali have been killed after some armed men dressed in military clothes attacked a village of Fulani herders in central Mali.

A local government official and a Fulani association said on Saturday that the attackers  targeted the village of Binedama in the Mopti region, which has seen dozens of exchanged ethnic massacres over the past few years.

According to Reuters, the Fulani, semi-nomadic herders present across West Africa, have been accused by rival farming communities of supporting local jihadist groups, making them targets of violence from ethnic vigilante militias and sometimes government forces.

Moulaye Guindo, the mayor of the commune of Bankass, which neighbours the commune to which Binedama belongs, said between 20 and 30 people were killed by men in military attire.

Fulani association Tabital Pulaaku said 29 people were killed, including a 9-year-old girl. It blamed the attack on Malian soldiers, who have surrounded the village in pick-up trucks before killing the villagers and setting houses on fire.

"The victims are all from the peaceful civilian population .. who had not committed any crime except for their ethnic identity," Tabital Pulaaku said in a statement.

Mali has been in crisis since 2012 when al Qaeda-linked militants seized its northern desert. French forces intervened the following year to drive them back, but the militants have since regrouped and extended their operations into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Hours ago, France’s Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly announced that the French forces have killed Abdelmalek Droukdel, a senior Al Qaeda terrorist in an operation in northern Mali Wednesday.

“On June 3, the French armed forces, with the support of their partners, neutralized the emir Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI), Droukdel and several of his close collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali,” Parly wrote on Twitter.

Droukdel was among the most experienced militants in North Africa and was one of those who participated in the control of extremist armed militias over northern Mali before being repelled by a French military intervention in 2013 and scattered in the Sahel.

AQIM is one of the oldest al Qaeda franchises and has a long history of operation in North Africa. Droukdel led the terror group for more than 15 years.