A Malian army unit accompanied by foreign mercenaries, who from witness accounts appear to be members of Russia's paramilitary Wagner Group, last week carried out summary executions of hundreds of people in the town of Moura, in the centre of Mali, in an operation officially described as a crackdown on jihadist insurgents, according to a report by NGO Human Rights Watch. Mediapart’s West Africa correspondent Rémi Carayol has spoken to survivors of the massacre and with various sources including local rights activists, who say the dead, variously estimated to number between 300 and 600, were mostly non-jihadist civilians.
Several hundreds of people, possibly more than 600 according to one local source contacted by Mediapart, were the victims of mass executions carried out last week in the Malian town of Moura in an anti-jihadist operation conducted by both Malian soldiers and foreign mercenaries who appear, from witness accounts, to be members of the so-called Wagner Group, a private Russian paramilitary organisation with close links to the Kremlin.
