Mali’s Junta Has Turned to Russian Forces and Drones to Fight Jihadist and Separatist Insurgents, and Civilians In The Center And North are Paying for Each Escalation
Forty-nine airstrikes, 89 civilians killed. Between April and August 2026, Malian forces and the Russia-controlled Africa Corps carried out 49 airstrikes that killed 89 civilians, according to data from the conflict monitor ACLED: more than double the 22 strikes and 44 civilian deaths recorded over the same months of 2025. The same data show that Malian armed forces killed 268 civilians in that period, and the al-Qaeda-linked group JNIM killed 134. Those numbers are the backdrop to a report released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, which accuses every armed party in Mali’s war of grave violations of the laws of war.
“The Malian military, armed groups, and insurgent forces are committing grave laws-of-war violations while international organizations and governments largely stand by,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, the organization’s senior Sahel researcher. The report urges the African Union’s Peace and Security Council to convene a dedicated session on civilian protection and accountability in Mali, and to press all sides to stop.
The appeal to the AU is telling. Since the coups of 2020 and 2021, Mali’s military government has pushed out French forces and a UN peacekeeping mission and rebuilt its security partnerships around Russia, first through the Wagner Group and, since 2025, through the state-controlled Africa Corps. Across the Sahel, the old external watchdogs have thinned out, and the question of who now holds armed forces and insurgents to account increasingly falls to African institutions.
How the Evidence Was Gathered
Between 30 July and 20 September, Human Rights Watch interviewed 30 people remotely, including 16 witnesses to abuses, human rights defenders, community leaders, journalists and a Malian soldier. It verified and geolocated two videos posted online showing the aftermath of an apparent drone strike, analyzed 12 photographs of drone debris and reviewed images of casualties from other incidents. It wrote to Mali’s defense minister on 5 August with its findings and questions and received no reply.
A Clinic and a Cattle Market
The report documents two drone attacks it describes as apparently indiscriminate. On 29 July a strike partially destroyed a health facility in Talahandak, a village in the northern Kidal region near the Algerian border, in an area controlled by JNIM and the separatist Azawad Liberation Front (FLA). Witnesses, including a health worker, said no fighters were at or near the center and that it held only medicines and medical equipment. Photographs of the debris showed components consistent with a Shahed-type delta-wing drone.
On 19 August, an apparent military drone dropped a munition on people gathered at the cattle market in Tombonkore, in the central Bandiagara region, killing six men and injuring at least 20 others. A 24-year-old survivor described being thrown more than 15 meters by the blast and finding his right leg shredded. Mali has used Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones since 2022, and Akinci drones since 2024, and Russia has supplied drones and fighter jets to Africa Corps personnel since 2022.
Killings on the Ground
The report’s most painful case comes from the Ségou region. On 12 July, Malian soldiers shot dead five girls, aged 10 to 13, who were harvesting rice about three kilometers from the town of Niono. The soldiers took the bodies to the morgue at Niono hospital. They later apologized to the families, saying they had come under attack about nine kilometers away earlier that day and had mistaken the girls for attackers. As of mid-September, no investigation had been opened, to the organization’s knowledge, and no reparations had been offered.
In Djenné, in the Mopti region, members of the army-allied Dozo militia shot dead two ethnic Fulani men near the main mosque on 27 July. The next day, four Dozo militiamen took a third Fulani man from his home in the Sankore neighborhood; his body was found about two kilometers away with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. Residents said there were no JNIM fighters in the town and that the men were targeted for being Fulani, a community that Malian authorities and allied militias have repeatedly equated with Islamist fighters.
The Insurgents’ Record and Their Replies
The report is equally direct about the armed groups. On 18 July, JNIM and FLA fighters attacked a Malian military and Africa Corps convoy near Tabrichat in the Gao region, and at least 19 Malian soldiers who had surrendered were tortured and executed; the UN human rights office condemned the killings on 23 July. The two groups answer differently. JNIM’s Sharia Committee wrote that the killing of captives “did in fact take place” but that it had not ordered it, while arguing that the act did not require punishment under its reading of religious law. FLA spokesperson Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane wrote that the group “categorically rejects any allegation that its forces carried out the execution” of Malian soldiers, while acknowledging clashes that day and promising internal checks.
Accountability as Part of Self-Rule
Mali’s leaders have framed their break with Western partners as a recovery of national sovereignty, the right to choose their own allies and fight their own war. Sovereignty also carries duties: a state that claims the monopoly of force must answer for the girls in the rice field and the market in Tombonkore, just as insurgents who claim to govern territory must answer for prisoners executed in the desert. An African-led response, through regular public reporting by the AU Peace and Security Council and independent investigations backed by AU human rights experts, as the report proposes, would be one way to show that leaving old partners behind does not mean leaving accountability behind too.
