Mali’s Army, Russian Corps Accused of Civilian Abuses

A 52-year-old health worker said the commander of the Ténenkou military base refused to let him evacuate wounded people after an apparent military drone strike hit Guélédié village on Sept. 16, 2026, and warned him not to help them. Human Rights Watch said eight civilians were killed and at least six injured. The armed forces could launch a strike and block aid; villagers were left beneath it.

The strike and the refusal of aid

The health worker said he arrived about an hour after the explosion. He found six men dead and seven injured, “with their bodies burned”; one of the injured died at the scene. He called the military base commander and offered to take the wounded to the Ténenkou Referral Health Center.

“But he did not only categorically refuse our evacuating them,” he said. “But he also warned me not to provide them with any support. For him, they were JNIM fighters and he told me that the drone could not have targeted civilians.” The injured were eventually evacuated.

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) said in a Sept. 24 statement that its staff treated four “seriously injured” people at the health center. They had “burns over their entire bodies,” and one “died shortly after arrival.”

Witnesses said the drone dropped a munition on civilians at about 10 a.m. on the village outskirts. The eight men killed were between 25 and 40 years old. They had gathered around a tree where a man provided paid internet access through Starlink; residents said JNIM fighters often used the service to support operations.

A 40-year-old witness said a drone passed over the village at about 9 a.m. and returned repeatedly. “It was white and had long, thin, straight wings. It would spin around, disappear, and come back again.” That description broadly matched larger drones the Malian government is known to use.

Witnesses said more than 100 JNIM fighters were present in Guélédié, but none was among the casualties. They said the fighters warned residents through WhatsApp about a possible strike on the Starlink location, then left with many civilians. Fourteen civilians remained at the site.

“The explosion was deafening, really strong,” a 30-year-old villager said. “I saw very thick black smoke rising from the Starlink connection area.”

Human Rights Watch verified a video of the aftermath and located the site about 600 meters northeast of the village centre. The video showed three men’s bodies, two beneath a burned and broken tree and one in a nearby pond, along with two burned motorcycles and a destroyed solar panel.

Detention, torture and ransom

Human Rights Watch also reported that Malian forces and Africa Corps personnel detained numerous people at an army base in Sévaré between May and August. Four men said they were held incommunicado in a shipping container about 20 meters long, without windows, a toilet or washing facilities. They said the container was extremely hot and unventilated, and dozens of other detainees were held there.

“We got a small piece of bread and sometimes beans and half a bottle of water once a day,” a 32-year-old man said. “The heat was unbearable. On the first day, we were 27, but over the days we reached more than 70 people. We relieved ourselves in a bucket, it was always full and spilling onto the floor. They didn't empty it.” The men also reported being denied necessary medical care and facing verbal abuse.

Three men said soldiers and Africa Corps fighters tortured them in a room near the base entrance, alongside Sévaré’s main road, to make them confess to alleged links with JNIM. A man from Guirowel said two Russian soldiers drowned him in a barrel of water, revived him with electric shocks and drowned him again. He also said they burned his buttocks with hot plastic and lit a cloth on his back.

The 40-year-old said detainees died in the container after torture. “When a prisoner was about to die, we would bang on the door to alert the guards,” he said. “They told us to inform them only when a person died. They had no mercy. Eight people died during my detention.”

The military released three men from Thy on July 20 and the man from Guirowel on Aug. 6. Relatives reportedly paid 1.8 million CFA francs, about US$3,000, for the three men’s release and 1 million CFA francs, about $1,800, for the man from Guirowel.

Official claims, unanswered questions

In a Sept. 17 statement, the armed forces chief of staff said military units had “spotted terrorist elements concealed under vegetation northeast of Guélédié” with “war equipment and satellite communication devices,” then “neutralized” them and destroyed their equipment. Human Rights Watch said its account drew on remote interviews with 15 people between August and September: three witnesses to the strike, four former detainees and eight nongovernmental organisation members. The group said it sent letters to Mali’s and Russia’s defence ministers in early October seeking responses, but received no replies.

Human Rights Watch senior Sahel researcher Ilaria Allegrozzi said civilians were “bearing the brunt of the Mali junta's failure to rein in its abusive forces and allies.” The report says the Malian military and Africa Corps have taken hundreds of civilians into custody during counterinsurgency operations, and the junta has increasingly used airstrikes against armed groups. It also says rights groups, media and investigative organisations have documented airstrikes killing civilians.

The report says parties to Mali’s armed conflict must follow international humanitarian law, including rules requiring precautions to verify military targets and humane treatment for people deprived of liberty. Attacks that fail to distinguish civilians from military personnel are unlawfully indiscriminate, it says, and denying medical care to wounded people or detainees can constitute a war crime. Allegrozzi called for credible investigations and said the UN Human Rights Council should increase its scrutiny of the situation in Mali.