Four people died in Tin Adanda, a small hamlet in the Timbuktu region, on 12 February 2025. A joint patrol of Mali’s army and Wagner Group personnel had come through. A survivor Amnesty International calls Hana, now sheltering in Mberra, Mauritania, lost two sons and a cousin. They were arrested, then killed. Describing the men in the operation, she said: “They were mostly white men, accompanied by FAMa.”
The killings are one of seven incidents in a new Amnesty report, “No one is spared,” which says Mali’s armed forces (FAMa) and Wagner committed war crimes during joint operations along the Mauritanian border. Between June 2023 and December 2025, at least 34 civilians were unlawfully killed in the Ségou, Mopti and Timbuktu regions, the organization found. None was taking direct part in hostilities. Victims were shot as they ran or after arrest, and some had their throats cut or were burned, in some cases after death. Wagner, a Russian private military company, was active in Mali from late 2021 until June 2025.
Two drone strikes
The report examines two FAMa drone strikes in the Timbuktu region that killed at least 23 people, five or more of them children. One hit a market in Ejdeir on 16 March 2025, in daylight and without warning. The other struck a family home in Tangata in November 2025.
The day after Ejdeir, the Malian military said it had hit “terrorist gatherings” at a transit camp 109km northwest of Léré and killed “11 terrorists.” Amnesty’s analysis found the location matches Ejdeir. Seven people interviewed said there were no fighters at the market, and that all 16 dead and seven wounded were civilians.
“We found no evidence of the presence of members of armed groups or military objectives at either drone strike site,” said Marceau Sivieude, Amnesty’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa. “If confirmed, these strikes would amount to direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and should be investigated as possible war crimes.”
Torture in detention
Amnesty interviewed 15 men who said they were tortured on joint patrols or held at the military bases at Léré and Nampala. Other witnesses described torture of 30 people and said five died in the bases from abuse and the conditions. Amnesty’s investigation found Wagner members did most of it with FAMa soldiers present. Some of those soldiers interpreted, some stood by, and some threatened detainees. Victims were hung by the arms from a metal bar, put through simulated drowning, beaten with iron bars and sticks, and given electric shocks.
No detainee saw a judge, a lawyer or family. Detention lasted from one day to four months.
Most victims came from pastoralist communities, Fulani, Arab and Tuareg, suspected of ties to armed groups purely because of their ethnicity and where they lived. A herder from Ségou now in Mauritania said: “In their minds, all herders are terrorists, and as a result they do not hesitate to burn people and property.”
Demands and the response so far
Sivieude said Mali cannot brush off the allegations without impartial and effective investigations. Amnesty wants authorities to protect civilians, clarify the chain of command for foreign personnel and set up an independent domestic mechanism to monitor them. It also asks Bamako to publish its agreement with Africa Corps, which replaced Wagner in June 2025, and wants the African Union to condemn the violations.
The research covered ten localities in Mauritania’s Hodh ech-Chargui region, where UNHCR had registered 290,000 Malian refugees by 31 July 2026. Amnesty spoke to 119 of them. It sent its findings to Malian authorities on 3 August 2026 and had no reply at publication. Mali’s government has denied Wagner was on its territory, though Russian authorities have said Mali sought a private company’s help against insurgents.
The International Criminal Court has investigated Mali since 2013. Mali notified its withdrawal from the Rome Statute in June 2026, but the ICC keeps jurisdiction over crimes committed between January 2013 and 23 June 2027, when the withdrawal takes effect.
