‘We need food and shelter’: farmers flee for their lives as terrorists attack villages in Mali

Soldiers that were part of the UN’s Minusma peacekeeping force, which was made to withdraw from Mali after its new regime took power. Photograph: Souleymane Ag Anara/AFP/Getty Images

There was no warning. The raiders came late in the night, shouting and shooting. The unarmed farmers of Bujo had no chance to defend themselves, and those who were too slow to flee died. By the morning, the villagers’ homes had been burned, livestock stolen and stores looted. They buried 17 victims in the communal graveyard and then walked the 15km to the nearby town of Bandiagara, where they remain.

The attack in mid-August was one of more than a dozen assaults last month on similar villages in a small area of central Mali that have killed at least 100 people and displaced tens of thousands.