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Mali massacre victims included 24 children: PM

12 June 2019 02:41 (UTC +04:00)

Bodies recovered from a massacre of almost a 100 people by a Malian ethnic militia included at least 24 children, many of them shot in the back, the prime minister said during a visit to the crime scene on Tuesday.

Attackers believed to belong to the Fulani ethnic group raided the rival Dogon village of Sobane Da, in central Mali, between Sunday and Monday.

They killed at least 95 people and burned houses to the ground, in an escalation of the tit-for-tat ethnic slaughter that has engulfed the mostly Saharan nation this year.

“All these victims of horror and barbarity remind us of our responsibility as leaders to reinforce and accelerate security,” said Boubou Cisse, who became prime minister in April after his predecessor stepped down following an earlier massacre by Dogon gunmen on a Fulani village in March.