The United States voiced horror Monday after a UN report said Mali’s military junta executed at least 500 people in a 2022 operation, with Washington pointing blame at Russian mercenaries.
The UN High Commission for Human Rights on Friday released a long-awaited investigation into the March 2022 anti-jihadist operation in the central town of Moura, saying that Mali’s armed forces worked with foreign fighters to kill at least 500 people in violation of international norms.
The UN report did not name the foreigners, but the United States in a statement placed blame at Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group which has forged close ties with the junta and played a growing role across Africa as well as in the Ukraine war.
“The United States is appalled by the disregard for human life exhibited by elements of the Malian Armed Forces in cooperation with the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group — a transnational criminal organization,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
“As we have said before, the Wagner Group is a destabilizing force whose personnel have engaged in an ongoing pattern of abuses, including execution-style killings, sexual violence, and torture in Mali and other nations struggling with instability,” he said.
The Malian junta denounced the report as “fictitious” and “biased.”
The death toll given by the report makes the atrocity the single worst in the Sahel country since a jihadist insurgency broke out in 2012.
Around 20 women and seven children were among those killed, while evidence suggests 58 women and girls were victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence, the report said.
