BAMAKO, March 28 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The death toll from Saturday’s attack by gunmen on villagers in central Mali has risen to 157, a government spokesman said, confirming it as one of the worst recent atrocities in a country beset by ethnic violence.
The attack, in which women and children were burned in their homes, marked an escalation in violence between Dogon hunters and Fulani herders that killed hundreds of civilians last year and is spreading across Africa’s Sahel, the region between the Sahara to the north and the continent’s savannas to the south.
“The official death toll is 157,” government spokesman Amadou Kotia said. Officials on Saturday said that about 134 had been killed, though they expected that number to rise.
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, said this week that the crimes may fall under the court’s jurisdiction and that a delegation will be sent to Mali. A U.N. Security Council mission was already visiting the former French colony to seek solutions to the violence when the attack took place.
An official from a nearby town said on Saturday that armed men, dressed as traditional Dogon hunters, attacked villages populated by Fulani herders. The Dogon suspect the Fulani of harboring Islamist extremists, charges the Fulani deny.
Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita responded to the attack by replacing two generals and disbanding an anti-jihadist vigilante group called Dan Na Amassagou, whose Dogon fighters were suspected of being behind the massacre.
The group has denied its members were involved and rejected the government’s dissolution. — NNN-AGENCIES