At least 51 people were killed late on Sunday after Islamist militants raided three villages in central Mali near the border with Niger, a district administrator said in a note seen by Reuters on Monday.
The towns of Ouatagouna, Karou and Deouteguef were simultaneously attacked around 6pm on Sunday, according to a note from the Asongo district administrator to the governor of Gao region. Houses were ransacked and burned to the ground and herds of livestock carried away, said the note, which was seen by Reuters.
In Burkina Faso, meanwhile, 12 troops were killed and eight were wounded on Sunday in an ambush near the border with Mali, the government said. “Members of the ground forces and the rapid intervention force GARSI were ambushed” in the northwest Boucle du Mouhoun region, communications minister Ousseni Tamboura said.
Burkina Faso’s President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said in a tweet that “we continue to wage without concession the war the obscurantist and barbaric forces have imposed on our country”.