Amnesty reports war crimes by Malian army and Russian Wagner forces

Amnesty International released a report accusing Mali's armed forces and the Russian paramilitary Wagner group of committing war crimes during joint operations from 2023 to 2025. The organization recorded the killing of at least 34 civilians in seven sites within the Ségou, Mopti and Tombouctou regions, stating that none were directly involved in hostilities. killings included deliberate shootings of people trying to escape, executions after arrests, and instances of throat-cutting and burning alive or post-mortem.

The report also details two Malian drone attacks in Tombouctou that killed at least 23 individuals, among them five children. Testimonies describe torture of 15 survivors during patrols and at the Léré and Nampala bases, with additional accounts of torture inflicted on about thirty others and the death of five detainees from abuse or poor detention conditions. The majority of victims were from Fulani, Arab or Tuareg pastoral groups, allegedly singled out on ethnic grounds. In April, three civil-society groups, including the Fédération internationale pour les droits humains, filed a case before the African Court on Human Rights and Peoples alleging these violations.