The Amnesty International report, published on September 29, concerns operations in Mali between June 2023 and December 2025. After the 2020 and 2021 coups, the Malian junta turned to Russia for support in the fight against jihadists and brought in the Wagner Group, which in 2025 was transformed into Africa Corps under the control of Russia’s Ministry of Defense.
According to the report, Amnesty documented the deaths of at least 34 civilians in seven localities in the Ségou, Mopti, and Timbuktu regions. The organization says that none of the victims was directly involved in fighting at the time of death.
Some people, Amnesty writes, were shot while trying to flee or after being detained. Others, according to the report, were stabbed or burned — alive or after death.
The report separately describes an incident in the village of Tin-Adanda in the Timbuktu region: on February 12, 2025, four people died there during a joint patrol by Malian forces and Wagner. Amnesty also reports two Malian army drone strikes in the same region, which killed at least 23 people, including at least five children.
The organization also reports testimony from 15 men who survived torture on joint patrols or at bases in Léré and Nampala. The report also includes other accounts: of the torture of about 30 people and the deaths of five detainees due to torture or poor detention conditions.
Amnesty notes that most of the victims it identified belonged to Fulani herder communities, Arabs, or Tuaregs. According to the organization, some people were suspected of links to armed groups solely because of their ethnicity and presence in the area of operations; in April, three civil society organizations, including FIDH, filed a complaint with the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights over alleged abuses involving the Malian army and Wagner.
