An army air strike at a market in Mali’s northern Timbuktu region on Sunday killed at least 18 people and injured seven, a local rights group said, while the army said it was targeting terrorists.
The Collective for the Defence of the Rights of the Azawad People, which is linked to separatist Tuareg rebels, said Malian armed forces bombed a weekly market 50 km (30 miles) north of the city of Lerneb.
Mali’s army said on Monday it had launched air strikes against what it called terrorist activity in the same area cited by the rights group. It said in a statement on X that the strikes has “neutralised” at least 11 terrorists.
North Mali is rife with militant activity linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.
The Tuaregs, an ethnic group who inhabit the Sahara region including northern Mali, are fighting for an independent homeland.
They launched an insurgency against Mali’s government in 2012, but the rebellion was later hijacked by Islamist groups, setting off a violent insurgency that has since spread across West Africa’s Sahel region and beyond.
In July last year, Tuareg rebels attacked a convoy of Malian soldiers and mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group in the far north of the country, near the town of Tinzaouaten close to the border with Algeria. Dozens of Russian and Malian soldiers were killed in the attack, the rebels said.
It is not uncommon for Mali, which has been under military rule since a 2020 coup, to carry out air strikes on insurgent targets in the north of the country.
At least 21 people, including 11 children, were killed by drone strikes on Tinzaouaten in August, Tuareg rebels said. In October, a drone strike at a fair in Timbuktu region killed at least eight people, including children.
