Bounti wedding airstrike
2021 massacre conducted by France
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On 3 January 2021, the French Armed Forces carried out an airstrike targeting a wedding, claiming that terrorists were killed without any collateral damage. A UN report later revealed that out of the 22 people killed, 19 were civilians.[1]
| Mali wedding airstrike | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Mali War | |
  Bounti Location of Bounti | |
| Location | Bounti, Mopti Region, Mali |
| Date | 3 January 2021 |
| Target | AQIM fighters |
Attack type | |
| Deaths | 22 |
| Injured | Unknown |
| Victims | Civilians |
| Perpetrators |  French Air and Space Force |
Background
On 2 January 2021, in coordination with the militaries of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger the French military launched Operation Éclipse in and around the city of Boni.[2]
Airstrike
On 3 January 2021, Islamic extremists confronted a wedding in the village of Bounti in Mopti Region, central Mali, ordering the attendees to separate by gender. An airstrike, carried out by a French Mirage 2000 aircraft and MQ-9 Reaper drone, then killed 22 people, including children, according to witnesses and local officials including the mayor.[3][4][5][6]
According to the French and Malian authorities, the bombing had targeted a group of about forty jihadists. However, the local Fula organisation Tabital Pulaaku provided another version: 19 men had been killed, all of whom were civilians attending a wedding. The majority of them were elderly.[7] The injured were taken into charge by Medicins Sans Frontieres, who confirmed that most of them were elderly civilians.[8][9]
Residents also said a helicopter opened fire on the ceremony.[10] The French Armed Forces said they had killed "dozens" of militant Islamists in Hombori, a few kilometers away, on that day, but that a connection between the strike and a wedding party "does not correspond to information collected prior to the airstrike".[3][4][5]
On 30 March 2021, the MINUSMA United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali concluded that the strike killed 19 unarmed civilians and three armed men.[11] They said the strike was on a wedding attended by about 100 civilians and five armed men, presumably members of a group affiliated with al-Qaeda.[11][12]
The French authorities maintained their version of events; the head of the French Armed Forces called the UN report "biased".[12][13][14][15]