Malian civilians suffered serious abuses at the hands of Islamic militants, the Malian armed forces and their allies during attacks across the West African country earlier this year, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Monday.

The report documented the killings of civilians and burning of civilian vehicles by JNIM fighters, as well as abusive counterinsurgency operations against Fulani communities from the Malian army and its allies, which led to killings of 38 civilians, including 23 children. It also said the Mali’s military carried out two apparent drone strikes that killed 10 adults and 12 children and teenagers.

“As fighting flares up again, the warring parties in Mali are once again carrying out grave abuses against civilians, repeating former patterns of harming civilians,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Longstanding impunity continues to fuel the cycle of abuses.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 30 witnesses, verified and geolocated videos and photographs posted on social media, and analyzed satellite imagery.

Mali has been plagued for over a decade by militants affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group, including JNIM, as well as a Tuareg separatist rebellion in the north.

Violence escalated in recent months after an alliance of JNIM and Tuareg separatists carried out the largest coordinated attack in over a decade, targeting the airport of the country’s capital, Bamako, the nearby garrison town of Kati, and several northern and central cities. Mali’s defense minister Gen. Sadio Camara died in a car-bomb attack on his home.

The landlocked country is part of the Sahel, a vast strip of land south of the Sahara Desert that has become the epicenter of extremist violence in recent years.

April’s attacks exposed the weaknesses of Mali’s strategy to combat the rebellion, including relying on Russia, which has partnered with the military-led government after it distanced itself from former allies such as France.

The Associated Press gained rare access to the Mauritanian border at the end of 2025, where thousands of Malians have fled in recent months as fighting intensified. Dozens of refugees described indiscriminate killings, beheadings, abductions and sexual abuse from Africa Corps, the Russian military unit working with the Malian army.

“We took sufficient measures so that civilians are not collateral victims of the fighting,” the separatist Azawad Liberation Front spokesman Mohamed El Maouloud Ramadane told Human Rights Watch. “We wrote several times to communities located around the city (of Kidal) to tell them to leave and not to approach military sites.”

JNIM said civilians “violating some of the rules of order enforced by JNIM in its areas of controls or on the siege … are deterred proportionately to their violation as per the Sharia (Islamic law) rulings regarding offenders – leniently in some cases and strictly in others”.

Mali's military authorities did not reply to a letter sent by the rights group.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)