Gunmen have killed at least 23 people and wounded 12 in an attack on a village in the Bandiagara region of central Mali, local officials said today.
The governor of the region, Sidi Mohamed El Beqir, said that unidentified men killed dozens of people and set fire to several houses in the village of Jaru on Friday.
"The attackers stayed in the village until 19:XNUMX p.m. They burned part of the village and took the villagers' cattle," said the president of the regional youth organization, Amadu Luge.
Communities across central and northern Mali have been affected by protracted armed conflict since 2012. The extremists were successfully expelled from the northern cities, with the help of a military operation led by France. However, they regrouped in the desert and began attacking the Malian army and its allies.
Members of JNIM, a West African jihadist group linked to Al Qaeda, began a blockade of the commercial city of Timbuktu nearly two weeks ago in response to an influx of Malian soldiers and foreign mercenaries into the area.
The blockade led to a halt in the delivery of food and other goods.
Since the military junta took power in the country in 2020, Mali has increasingly rejected help from Western countries, opting for an unofficial partnership with the Russian mercenary organization Wagner to succeed in regaining control from extremist groups in the center and north of the country.
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