This report documents violations of international law and Malian law committed by members of the Malian armed forces and of the private military security company Wagner during joint military operations between June 2023 and December 2025.
These operations were conducted as hostilities resumed with signatory armed groups following the breakdown of the 2015 peace agreement and as UN troops withdrew from Mali. The intensification of the military operations had a significant impact on civilians living along the Mali-Mauritania border and led to a large influx of Malian refugees into neighboring country.
The report presents conclusive evidence that multiple violations of international humanitarian law were committed by the Malian Armed Forces and their allies. These violations constitute war crimes of murder, torture, attacks on human dignity, sexual violence, pillaging, and destruction of civilian property, in addition to other serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, such as arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance.
Amnesty International has also collected several accounts indicating that at least 23 people – including at least one woman and five children – were killed in drone strikes during military operations in the villages of Ejder and Tangata in 2025, in the region of Timbuktu. The organization found no evidence of the presence of armed group members or military targets in the vicinity of these two strikes. If this were the case, then these would have been direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, which constitute war crimes.
Based on these findings, recommendations are made to the Malian authorities, among others, to protect civilians, prevent the recurrence of these violations, and hold those responsible for them accountable.
Read “No One is Spared: War Crimes Committed by the Malian Army and Foreign Allied Forces Along the Mauritanian Border.”