It only took a few hours after the French warnings.
The Malian army said on Friday evening that it had discovered a mass grave near the base returned to it four days ago by the French army in Gossi, in the north of the country.
Earlier, the French General Staff had published a video showing, according to him, Russian mercenaries of Wagner burying bodies in order according to him to accuse the French of having left a mass grave behind them.
“Bodies in a state of advanced putrefaction were discovered in a mass grave, not far from the camp formerly occupied by the French force Barkhane”, affirms the general staff of the Malian armies in a press release.
On Tuesday, the French general staff had already warned to expect “informational attacks” aimed at discrediting the French army on the occasion of the handover of the Gossi base.
Video filmed by drone
In this video taken by drone to which the AFP had access Thursday evening (and shared on Twitter), and which the French general staff describes as an "informational attack", we can see soldiers busying themselves around corpses which they cover with sand.
In another sequence, we see two of these soldiers filming the half-buried bodies.
The staff assures that they are white soldiers that it has identified on videos and photos taken at other places.
Some photos also show vehicles leaving a base whose structure and environment correspond to the grip of Gossi, where an AFP team has already visited twice.
"Structured Information Maneuver"
At the start of this informational response, images broadcast Thursday on the Twitter account of a man named Dia Diarra, who proclaims himself "former soldier" and "Malian patriot".
This account was created in January 2022, AFP found.
After warning Wednesday of the imminent publication of a video showing abuses committed by the French, he published the next day a photo of blurred corpses buried in the sand, with the comment: "This is what the French left behind them when they left the base at #Gossi (…) we can't keep silent about that!
".
The same account later posts a short video of these half-buried bodies.
“We are witnessing a structured informational maneuver”, based on the “upscaling of a first tweet”, commented Friday the spokesperson for the staff, Colonel Pascal Ianni.
The Dia Diarra account "is most likely a fake account created by Wagner", the Russian private military company, estimates the French staff.
“This maneuver to discredit the force (French anti-jihadist in the Sahel) Barkhane seems coordinated.
It is representative of the multiple information attacks to which the French military have been subjected for many months”.
According to the French army, "the comparison of the photos published on Twitter and the images collected by the specialized sensor makes it possible to make a direct link between what Wagner's mercenaries are doing and what is falsely attributed to the French soldiers".
According to her, these "exactions testify to the modes of action implemented by Wagner's mercenaries, who have been observed in the Central African Republic since (his) deployment and which have been denounced by many international organizations and NGOs".
World
mali
Army