20 killed in central Mali village attack

SANAA, Feb. 15 (YPA) – At least 20 civilians were killed in overnight attack on the village of Ogossagou in central Mali, local officials said on Friday.

According to the local officials, the attack was part of the civil strife in the centre of the country.

“Twenty bodies have been counted, some of them charred,” the village’s mayor was quoted by AFP.

While the attack resulted in the disappearance of 28 other people, whose fate remains unknown, and local authorities are pointing fingers at the Dogon fishermen.

According to the authorities, the attack was carried out by about 30 gunmen last night, and the consequences were compounded by the withdrawal of the Malian army from the village hours earlier.

During the attack, parts of the village were burned and eyewitnesses said food stocks were destroyed and residents’ livestock were looted.

The Fulani village has been witnessing  an armed attack in March 2019 by Dogon fishermen, a culmination of the civil conflict that has so far continued in the centre of the country.

Mali has been struggling to contain a jihadist revolt that broke out in the north of the country in 2012, claiming thousands of military and civilian lives since.

The conflict later spread to central Mali and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Ethnic violence surged in central Mali after the emergence of a group called the Katiba Macina in 2015.

E.M