Dozens of civilians were killed this week in Telataye, a town in northern Mali attacked by jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) organization, local officials said. This is the first time that Telataye, about 150 kilometers from Gao, has suffered an attack of such magnitude from the Islamic State group in the Greater Sahara (EIGS). Telataye, consisting essentially of an agglomeration of hamlets in a vast desert expanse, is located at the convergence of areas of influence of different armed groups, and clashes are recurrent there.
The EIGS jihadists who arrived on Tuesday fought a fierce battle with rival jihadists from the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM, affiliated with Al-Qaeda), and other armed groups, including the Movement for the salut de l’Azawad (MSA), predominantly Tuareg, reported to Agence France-Presse various interlocutors.
The situation on the ground is obscure, as information is struggling to come up from this remote area, largely cut off from communication networks and dangerous. The human toll also varies according to the sources, which however all speak of dozens of civilian deaths, without it clearly appearing which part of these civilians would have been caught in the crossfire, as is often the case, or could have been executed.
Populations caught in the crossfire
The men of the EIGS succeeded at the cost of bitter fighting of more than three hours to take the locality Tuesday evening, had reported local interlocutors at the beginning of the week.
A local elected official and an MSA official speaking on condition of anonymity reported on Friday, one of forty-five civilians killed, the other of more than thirty. A humanitarian spoke of several dozen civilians killed. The local elected official and the head of the MSA both reported a withdrawal, at least partial, of the ISGS fighters. “Currently we control the city, and the GSIM another part”said the head of the MSA.
“What really worries us is the humanitarian situation, the populations are left to fend for themselves”said the local elected official. “The situation there is very difficult according to witnesses”, reported a humanitarian working in the area. An association of women, nationals of the locality but settled in Gao, launched a “urgent call” pour “to help the wounded populations”.
Télataye had some 13,000 inhabitants in 2009, the date of the last census in Mali. The GSIM is considered to be very influential in this region. Other armed groups that signed peace agreements with the Malian state in 2015 after fighting it, mainly MSA fighters, are also based there.
All this immense region of Gao and Ménaka, further east, has been the prey for months of fighting pitting jihadists against each other or jihadists with other armed groups, mainly Tuareg. The State has a very weak presence there and the populations are caught between two fires, victims of massacres and reprisals because suspected of pacting with the enemy, or deprived of means of subsistence.
The EIGS, created from a split with other jihadist groups in 2015, has flourished in recent years in an area of action limited to the border strips between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The group, which has largely recruited from nomadic communities historically marginalized by the central states, has been responsible for numerous massacres of civilians, notably in Seytenga in Burkina Faso where 86 civilians were killed in June.