Almost 100 Malian Villagers Killed by Islamists as Genocide Against Christians in West Africa Continues
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – 95 people, all of them Christian, in a traditionally Dogon village in Mali were slaughtered by a band of Muslim Fulani Herdsmen June 9th.
According to witnesses, 50 of the nomadic pastoralists, who have been a significantly radicalized segment of the Muslim population in West Africa, surrounded the village in trucks and razed it to the ground, killing men, women, and children.
“Anyone who tried to escape was killed,” a witness named Amadou Togo told AFP.
The government of Mali resigned in April of this year, leaving its Christian inhabitants at the mercy of the roving bands of Islamic militants that have swarmed West Africa in recent years, making it one of the most violent places in the world and contributing to a situation that the Nigerian House of Representatives called “genocide” in July 2018.
Despite the obvious religious dimension of the conflict, with Open Doors having reported that all of the Malian villagers killed in Sobame Da at the beginning of June were Christian, the BBC attributed the massacre to “clashes between Dogon hunters and semi-nomadic Fulani herders”–a mere fight for resources.
In a newsletter on the attack, Open Doors on June 22nd asked partners to pray for the country ranked 24th on its World Watch List 2019, as well as the rest of the countries in the African Sahel region (Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger) beset by instability and genocidal Islamism.
“As we see the magnitude of these attacks and previous ones, pray that God would end this movement,” the newsletter read.