18 people are killed in a strike on a north Mali market, according to a civil society group

At least eighteen people were killed and seven injured in Sunday’s army airstrike at a market in the northern Timbuktu region of Mali, according to a local rights group. The army said the strike was directed at terrorists.

A weekly market 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Lerneb was bombarded by Malian armed forces, according to the Collective for the Defence of the Rights of the Azawad People, which is associated with separatist Tuareg insurgents.

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The rights group quoted Mali’s army, which stated Monday it had carried out airstrikes against what it described as terrorist activity in the same region. At least 11 terrorists have been “neutralized” by the attacks, according to a statement posted on X.

There is a lot of violent activity in North Mali associated with Islamic State and al Qaeda.
The ethnic Tuaregs, who live in northern Mali and other parts of the Sahara, are fighting for their own country.

In 2012, they started an uprising against the government of Mali, but Islamist organizations later took control of the rebellion, igniting a bloody insurgency that has now expanded throughout the Sahel area of West Africa and beyond.

In the far north of the country, close to the town of Tinzaouaten near the Algerian border, Tuareg rebels ambushed a convoy of Malian soldiers and Russian Wagner Group mercenaries in July of last year. According to the rebels, the attack claimed the lives of dozens of Russian and Mali soldiers.

Mali, which has been ruled by the military since a coup in 2020, frequently launches airstrikes against rebel sites in the country’s north.

According to Tuareg rebels, drone strikes on Tinzaouaten in August killed at least 21 people, including 11 children. At least eight people, including children, were murdered in a drone hit at a fair in the Timbuktu region in October.