'No one to keep us safe' Malians flee villages amid rise in terrorist attacks

There was no warning. The raiders came late in the night, shouting and shooting. The unarmed farmers of Bujo had no chance to defend themselves, and those who were too slow to flee died.

- Jason Burke

By the morning, the villagers' homes had been burned, livestock stolen and stores looted. They buried 17 victims in the communal graveyard and then walked nine miles to the nearby town of Bandiagara, where they remain.

The attack in mid-August was one of more than a dozen assaults last month on similar villages in a small area of central Mali that have killed at least 100 people and displaced tens of thousands.

"We are really completely lost. We need food, shelter, everything. We want to go home to our village but there is no one to keep us safe there," said Wilas Bujo, a 59-yearold farmer who fled with 13 family members to Bandiagara.

Last week, the threat to civilians in Mali was underlined by an attack on a passenger boat on the Niger River by al-Qaida affiliated militants from the Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) group. About 50 people died after three rockets were fired into the vessel in northern Mali.

A government military base was attacked at the same time and 15 soldiers were killed.

Mali is one of the countries most affected by extremism in the central Sahel, which is the global centre of terrorism, according to recent figures compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace thinktank.

In 2022, terrorism deaths around the world decreased by 9% to 6,701, after remaining steady for four years, but the toll in Mali rose to 944, a 56% increase. Most of the victims were civilians.