UN team to investigate ‘horrific’ massacre in central Mali

This handout picture taken and released by the Malian presidential communication and public relations service (Cellule Communication et Relations Publiques de la Presdience du Mali) on March 25, 2019, shows a group opf men gathering to listen to the Malian president following an attack on March 23, on the village of Ogossagou, near Mopti, where over 130 Fulani villagers, including women and children, were killed. (AFP)

• UN human rights office spokeswoman says the massacre in Ogossagou, in Mali’s Mopti region, mostly targeted people from the ethnic Fulani, or Peuhl, community

GENEVA: The United Nations is deploying crime-scene investigators, human rights officers and a child protection expert to central Mali to investigate intercommunal violence over the weekend that killed more than 150 people, one-third of them children.
Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani of the UN human rights office says the massacre in Ogossagou, in Mali’s Mopti region, mostly targeted people from the ethnic Fulani, or Peuhl, community.
She said Tuesday the “horrific attacks” signal a “spike in killings” in a cycle of violence in the region that has caused 600 deaths and displaced thousands since last March.
Shamdasani said the attacks appeared to be motivated by an effort to eliminate violent Islamic extremist groups active in Mali, but that “millions of people are being painted as violent extremists simply because they are Muslim.”