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The Malian government fired Wednesday the governor of the Mopti region, following a mbadacre in a village in which 35 people died.
Three days of national mourning will also be organized "in tribute to the victims of the terrorist attack perpetrated on June 10, 2019 against the population of the village of Sobane Da," said President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in a statement read on public television .
"Learning from this tragedy, the government has removed the regional governor of Mopti," said General Sidi Albadane Toure.
Twenty-four of the dead were children, the government said in a statement in which he added that six people had been arrested "after routine checks".
Authorities have revised the death toll to 95 from about 35.
In another incident on Wednesday, an attack on villages of the Dogon ethnic group in the south of the country left at least two people dead and several others wounded, said a local official and a Malian security source.
Armed men surrounded Sobane Da village Sunday in an enclave of Dogon, killing residents and burning houses during a seven-hour attack, survivors reported.
The murders sparked fears of total violence in the region, an ethnic patchwork where tensions have soared since the emergence of a violent movement led by a jihadist in 2015.
The government gave a provisional figure of 95 dead and 19 missing.
This report was based on the first information provided by the soldiers and the district mayor who visited the village, also known as Sobane-Kou.
But Monday night, doubts were expressed and revised figures were confirmed the next day, officials said.
"This figure is based on a careful census conducted by a team of officials from the civil protection force (Malian), medical examiners (and) of the Mopti public prosecutor," said the statement.
About 100 women managed to escape to the village of Koundo, which partly explains the confusion.
The government, citing the risk of a new shift in the cycle of violence, has also urged local people to "not fall into the trap of badociation guilt and revenge".
Troubled region
Ethnic violence in central Mali has increased after the formation in 2015 of a Fulani-majority jihadist group led by preacher Amadou Kufa.
On May 16, the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA, announced that it had recorded "at least 488 deaths" during Fulanis attacks in the central regions of Mopti and from Ségou since January 2018.
Armed Fulanis "left 63 dead" among civilians in the Mopti region during the same period, he added.
During the bloodiest raid, about 160 Peul villagers were mbadacred on 23 March in Ogossagou, near the border with Burkina Faso, by suspected Dogon hunters.
The Fulani are mainly herders and traders, while the Bambara and the Dogon are traditionally sedentary farmers.
In the heart of the Sahel, Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world.
The unrest in the volatile central region coincides with an ongoing jihadist campaign that the Malian government is struggling to contain, despite military support from France and UN peacekeepers.
Fall of confidence
Analysts said public confidence in the government had collapsed, which has favored the creation of so-called self-defense groups.
"Militias, rightly or wrongly, were created to address a need for security among people who no longer trust or trust the effectiveness of institutional responses," Baba Dakono said. Institute of Security Studies (ISS)), a think tank in Bamako.
An expert working for an aid group in France, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized the government for its "primarily repressive" response, particularly with regard to the Fulani community.
The army, he added, had been deployed about 20 kilometers from the mbadacre but could not stop it.
"They face enemies who take multiple forms and threats are everywhere, they are rather outdated," he said.
In another case Wednesday, the French army said three people had been killed in northern Mali when a French anti-terror unit opened fire on a vehicle that had not been arrested for inspection.
The incident occurred Saturday in the west of Timbuktu, one of three cities in northern Mali that were taken over by the French and Malian forces in 2013, but which are still periodically attacked by jihadists.
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