A tribal militia killed as many as 150 men, women and children in a village in central Mali on Monday, heightening fears that an Islamist insurgency in the area is mutating into an ethnic war.
Firing indiscriminately, gunmen from the semi-nomadic Fulani ethnic group raided Sobane-Kou, a village inhabited by the Dogon, a rival tribe aligned to Mali’s government.
Many residents were burnt alive as they cowered in their houses, according to Ali Dolo, the mayor of a nearby town, who said that 95 charred corpses had been found in the ruins of the village.
At least 65 people remain unaccounted for. The raid appeared to be a reprisal for an attack carried out by a pro-government Dogon militia elsewhere in the Mopti region in March that killed 157 Fulani villagers.
Mali has been at the centre of an Islamist insurgency that is spreading rapidly through the West African fringes of the Sahara, a region known as the Sahel.
Some 10,000 civilians were killed in the Sahel last year, more than in Iraq and Syria combined, as the region establishes itself as arguably the new frontline in the war on Islamist terror.
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The conflict has taken on an ethnic dimension as Islamist groups exploit tensions between rival groups that have long competed over land and grazing. Local Islamist groups have recruited heavily from the Fulani, who are mostly cattle-herders.
Struggling to cope against the emerging Islamist threat — despite the growing presence of Western forces in the region — local governments armed militias from tribes hostile to the Fulani, like the Dogon.
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Across West Africa, from Nigeria to Burkina Faso, violence between the Fulani and tribal militias, often armed by their respective governments, has led to a dramatic escalation of violence between groups that have long competed with each other for grazing and land.
Civilians have mostly borne the brunt of the violence. Demonstrating the cross-border nature of the violence, at least 19 people were killed in a raid on a village in Burkina Faso, across the border from Mali, on Monday.
Relatively peaceful until recently, Burkina Faso has been dangerously destabilised as militias pledging allegiance to both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State gain a foothold in the country.