BAMAKO - President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita
of Mali on Thursday visited the site of an ethnic massacre in
central Mali in which gunmen killed dozens of people, vowing
once again to crack down on spiralling insecurity.
Attackers believed to belong to the Fulani ethnic group
raided the ethnic Dogon village of Sobane Da on Sunday and
Monday, killing 35 people, according to the government, although
a local authority maintains the real figure is 95 deaths.
Neither has produced evidence for these tolls.
Keita cut short a trip to Switzerland on Wednesday to return
to Mali and handle the fallout from the attack, the latest in a
series of retaliatory strikes by Dogon hunters and Fulani
herders that have killed hundreds of civilians this year.
"The state will proceed immediately to disarm anyone who
illegally owns a firearm and those who refuse to surrender their
arms will be sanctioned severely by the law," he said in Sobane
Da, before visiting the wounded at a local hospital.
Keita's government made a similar pledge after an attack in
March by suspected Dogon militiamen that killed more than 150
Fulani villagers. But it has struggled to disarm militias, whom
local communities look to for protection from Islamist militants
and ethnic reprisals.
The violence between Dogon and Fulani and regular attacks by
jihadist groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State have
led many Malians to lose faith in their government's ability to
protect them.
Keita's government also announced it had fired General Sidy
Alassane Toure as governor of the Mopti region where the
killings occurred. It declared three days of national mourning.
Toure became the latest government official to lose his job
as a result of authorities' failure to contain spiraling ethnic
violence around Mopti.
After the March attack in the village of Ogossagou, Mali's
worst act of violence in years, Keita dismissed two top army
officials. His prime minister and entire government also
resigned shortly thereafter.
The new prime minister, Boubou Cisse, visited the scene of
this week's killing on Tuesday, and said that among the dead
were 24 children, some of whom had been shot in the back.
French forces intervened in Mali, a former French colony, in
2013 to push back a jihadist advance from the north, but the
militants have since regrouped and turned parts of north and
central Mali into a launchpad for attacks across the region.