At least 21 people, including 11 children, have been killed in drone airstrikes on a Saharan rural commune of Tinzaouaten in the far northeast of Mali on the Algerian border, according to a spokesman for a coalition of Tuareg-majority groups that fight for Azawad independence.
The deadly attack on Tinzaouatine on Sunday (25 August), which was later confirmed by Mali’s army, marks the largest number of civilians killed by drones since the country’s junta ended a 2015 peace deal with Tuareg separatist rebels last year in a move that observers warned could further destabilize the West African nation. The first strikes targeted a pharmacy, and were then followed by other strikes targeting people gathering in the vicinity of the initial damage, said the Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad, a coalition of Tuareg-majority groups fighting for the independence of northern Mali, which they call Azawad.
Mali’s army justified the attack by claiming in a statement that “these precision strikes targeted terrorists”. Tinzaouaten was the location were the Tuareg-led groups claimed in July to have killed at least 47 Malian soldiers and their 84 of their allied Russian Wagner Group mercenaries, though the army did not confirm that death toll. After the attack, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s “firm support” for Mali’s junta and its army, which has insisted to use the Wagner mercenaries stationed in the country only as “instructors”. Since the military coup in 2020, Mali’s army has been fighting the ongoing Tuareg-led rebellion in the north of the country.