Survivors recount deadliest attack since coup

BAMAKO (AP):

Moussa Tolofidie didn’t think twice when nearly 100 jihadis on motorbikes gathered in his village in central Mali last week.

A peace agreement signed last year between some armed groups and the community in the Bankass area had largely held, even if the gunmen would sometimes enter the town to preach sharīah to the villagers. But on this Sunday in June, everything changed – the jihadis began killing people.

“They started with an old man about 100 years old ... then the sounds of the weapons began to intensify around me, and then, at one moment, I heard a bullet whistling behind my ear. I felt the earth spinning, I lost consciousness and fell to the ground,” Tolofidie, a 28-year-old farmer, told AP by phone in Mopti town, where he was receiving medical care.

“When I woke up it was dark, around midnight. There were bodies of other people on top of me. I smelled blood and smelled burnt things and heard the sounds of some people still moaning,” he said.

At least 132 people were killed in several villages in the Bankass area of central Mali during two days of attacks last weekend, according to the government, which blames the Group to Support Islam and Muslims jihadi rebels linked to al-Qaeda

The attack – the deadliest since mutinous soldiers toppled President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita nearly two years ago – shows that Islamic extremist violence is spreading from Mali’s north to more central areas, analysts have said.

The conflict-riddled country has been battling extremist violence for a decade, since jihadis seized control of key northern cities in 2012 and tried to take over the capital.

They were pushed back by a French-led military operation the following year but have since regained ground.

Mali’s government blamed the attacks on the Group to Support Islam and Muslims, or JNIM, which is backed by al-Qaeda, although the group denied responsibility in a statement.