Amnesty International has called for a war crimes investigation into the alleged summary execution of at least 19 Malian soldiers following an ambush in northern Mali earlier this month.
The July 18 attack took place between the town of Anefis and the regional city of Gao, according to statements issued by Mali’s armed forces, the Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, and the al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin, known as JNIM.
Amnesty said it reviewed 12 videos showing the incident that were circulated on accounts on X and through a Telegram channel associated with Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group.
Ousmane Diallo, Amnesty’s senior researcher for the Sahel, said the footage appeared to show that the soldiers were no longer participating in the fighting when they were abused and killed.
“It is clear that the soldiers were hors de combat before being subjected to ill-treatment and killed in execution style,” Diallo said.
Under international humanitarian law, the term “hors de combat” refers to people who are protected from attack because they have surrendered, laid down their weapons, been detained or become unable to fight due to injury.
The United Nations human rights office has also called for an investigation, warning that the reported killings could constitute a war crime.
Mali’s military appeared to question the way the incident had been portrayed online in a statement released on Friday.
It said videos circulating on social media purported to show the summary execution of Malian soldiers and were being used to present the incident as a military victory, a characterisation it said contradicted the reality of the operation.
However, the army acknowledged that killing captured or incapacitated fighters would represent a serious breach of international humanitarian law and could be classified as a war crime.
The ambush was the latest in a series of increasingly coordinated attacks by the FLA and JNIM.
The two groups joined forces during nationwide attacks in April that killed Mali’s defence minister and targeted the country’s main airport. They launched another offensive this month aimed at capturing Anefis, although government forces have so far retained control of the town.
The escalation presents a growing challenge to Mali’s military-led authorities, who seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021 after promising to restore security across the landlocked West African country.