Dakar(Senegal):At least 15 civilians including children were killed Sunday by drone strikes in Mali's north, where the army and its Russian allies are fighting separatists and jihadists, local sources said.
The separatists blamed "the army of the Malian junta and Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group" for the strikes at Tinzaouatene, near Algeria, giving a provisional death toll of 21 civilians, including 11 children.
Tinzaouatene was the site of a major late July battle in which the mainly Tuareg-led separatists claimed to have inflicted a serious defeat on the Malian army and Wagner.
Sunday's strikes "initially targeted a pharmacy, then other strikes followed, targeting human gatherings near the first damage," said separatist spokesman Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane.
A local politician told AFP at least 15 civilians were killed in the strikes.
Meanwhile, a local NGO official said "at least 20 civilians including children" had been killed in the drone strikes on Sunday, and a retired local official told AFP at least 20 people were left dead.
- Heavy defeat -
Since seizing power in a 2020 coup, the West African nation's military leaders have made it a priority to retake all of the country from separatists and jihadist forces linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.