Human Rights Watch on Friday released a report finding that an airstrike carried out by Russia’s government-controlled Africa Corps killed eight civilians, including three children, in central Mali on June 15 in what the rights group described as an apparently unlawful attack.
According to the report, an aircraft identified by two Malian military sources as a Sukhoi Su-24 dropped at least two munitions on the village of Kyrnia in the Mopti region. The first struck outside the village chief’s residence, killing two of his children, his wife and another child, and injuring a woman. The second hit a small cattle market about 20 meters away, killing four men and injuring two others. Human Rights Watch said no Islamist armed group fighters were known to have been casualties.
The rights group said it remotely interviewed 19 people between June 24 and July 14, including six witnesses, civil society members, community leaders, Malian military sources and local journalists. It also analyzed satellite imagery of the strike sites, a video of the strikes that the Africa Corps posted online, and photographs published by an Islamist armed group. On July 22, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the Russian defense minister summarizing its findings and posing questions, but said it received no response.
On June 23, the Africa Corps reported on its Facebook and X accounts that it had carried out a successful airstrike on a ‘gathering place of terrorist groups’ in the Mopti region, killing several ‘field commanders.’ Human Rights Watch geolocated the two strikes shown in the group’s own video to Kyrnia. The Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) has controlled Kyrnia for the past six years, and witnesses said about 100 JNIM fighters were in the village at the time, gathered mainly at the mosque about 150 meters from the strike sites.
‘Russian government-controlled Africa Corps aircraft have killed civilians in a Malian village in seeming disregard for the laws of war,’ said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. ‘By handing the Russian authorities a blank check, the Malian government should be aware that it too is accountable for allied forces’ atrocities.’
The report notes that since military coups in 2020 and 2021, Mali’s junta, led by Gen. Assimi Goita, expelled French and United Nations forces and deepened ties with Moscow. The Russia-linked Wagner Group was rebranded as the Africa Corps after founder Yevgeny Prigozhin died in 2023 and came under direct Kremlin control. Human Rights Watch said the Africa Corps has deployed Su-24 aircraft in Mali since at least April 2025, with no public record of the aircraft being transferred to Malian authorities.
Witnesses described the attack in harrowing detail. ‘I saw it dropping a bomb, like a fireball, and I ran for cover under a tree,’ a 35-year-old trader told the researchers. A cowherder described the aftermath at the market: ‘The market was a mess, stalls blown apart over several meters, and shredded cows and sheep.’ Satellite imagery from June 25 shows two craters about 12 meters wide, and about nine market stalls appear to have been destroyed.
Under the laws of war applicable to the conflict in Mali, attacks that target civilians, fail to discriminate between civilians and combatants, or cause disproportionate civilian harm are prohibited. Human Rights Watch said the strikes did not appear to target specific military objectives, which would make them unlawfully indiscriminate. It called on the Malian government to investigate the incident and hold those responsible to account.
The findings add to a growing body of documentation of abuses involving Russia’s Africa Corps across the Sahel, where the force has backed juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger while civilian casualties from airstrikes have repeatedly been reported.
Sources: Human Rights Watch report, US News and World Report (Reuters), Africa Defense Forum
Author: Russia Desk
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