Mali’s armed forces and Russian Wagner Group personnel committed war crimes including killings and torture of civilians during joint operations between 2023 and 2025, Amnesty International has said in a new report documenting abuses across several regions of the country.
At least 34 civilians were killed in seven locations in the central Ségou and Mopti regions and northern Timbuktu region between June 2023 and December 2025, Amnesty said.
None of those killed was directly participating in hostilities at the time, the rights organisation said. Some were shot while attempting to flee or after being arrested, while others had their throats slit or were burnt alive or after their deaths.
The report – entitled No One is Spared – also documents torture, enforced disappearances, looting and two drone strikes that Amnesty says killed at least 23 civilians, including five children.
Mali’s military authorities turned to Russia for security support after taking power in coups in 2020 and 2021, bringing in Wagner personnel as French and other Western forces withdrew from the country.
Wagner formally ended its operations in Mali in June 2025 and was replaced by Africa Corps, which is linked directly to Russia’s defence ministry.
Pastoral communities under suspicion
The vast majority of the victims identified by Amnesty came from Fulani, Arab and Tuareg pastoral communities living in areas affected by fighting between government forces and armed groups.
Many live in sparsely populated areas near Mali’s border with Mauritania, where military operations have intensified since renewed hostilities began in August 2023, Ousmane Diallo of Amnesty International told RFI.
“In this context, the fact that a herder might be found in the bush, between two urban areas, is viewed with suspicion – suspicion of collusion with armed groups, of non-cooperation, or of being in the good graces of armed groups,” he said.
Some people appear to have been suspected of links to armed groups based largely on their ethnic background or simply because they remained in areas where such groups operate, Amnesty said.
Among the cases documented is the killing of four people in the small hamlet of Tin Adanda, in the Timbuktu region, during a joint Malian army and Wagner patrol on 12 February 2025.
One woman interviewed by Amnesty said two of her sons and a cousin were taken outside the village and killed. Another woman described seeing her husband executed outside their family home in Taborak a month earlier.
The organisation says these accounts contradict statements by the Malian armed forces maintaining that their operations target members of armed groups.
Drone strikes and torture
Amnesty also investigated two drone strikes in the Timbuktu region during 2025.
One struck a weekly market at Ejdeir on 16 March, killing 16 people and injuring others. Survivors interviewed by Amnesty said there were no combatants or military targets at the site.
Diallo told RFI that witnesses, survivors and people who provided first aid had given consistent accounts.
“The testimonies are unanimous in stating that there were no military targets,” he said.
The Malian army said at the time that it had “neutralised” a gathering of suspected militants in the area.
Diallo said that even if armed fighters had been present, international humanitarian law required forces to distinguish between military targets and civilians and to respect the principle of proportionality.
“Even if there may have been a few armed combatants present at the time of the strike, it was disproportionate, resulted primarily in civilian casualties and was not justified under international humanitarian law,” he said.
A second strike in Tangatta in November 2025 also resulted in civilian deaths, according to the report.
Amnesty separately interviewed 15 men who said they had been tortured or otherwise ill-treated during joint patrols or while detained at the military bases of Léré and Nampala.
Their accounts included beatings with iron bars, suspension by the arms, simulated drowning and electric shocks. Witnesses told Amnesty that they had seen 30 people tortured during patrols or at the bases and that five people died as a result of torture or poor detention conditions.
Those held were not brought before a judge and had no access to lawyers or their families during periods of detention that in some cases lasted several months.
‘Not much has changed’
Amnesty says abuses against civilians have continued in 2026, despite the period covered by the investigation ending in December last year.
“Unfortunately, not much has changed since then,” Diallo told RFI. “We have observed the continuation of these abuses following the same pattern.”
He said civilians often had little prospect of seeking justice inside Mali because reporting abuses could expose them to reprisals, leaving many with little option but to flee across the border into Mauritania.
Amnesty interviewed 119 Malian refugees during its investigation. By the end of July, the UN refugee agency had registered more than 290,000 Malian refugees in the Mauritanian region bordering Mali.
The organisation says it sent its findings to Mali’s transitional authorities on 3 August but had received no response by the time the report was published.
International avenues for accountability have also narrowed. Mali notified its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court’s founding Rome Statute in June, although the withdrawal does not take effect until June 2027.
The ICC, which has been investigating the situation in Mali since 2013, retains jurisdiction over crimes covered by the statute committed before the withdrawal becomes effective.
This article was adapted from the original version in French.
