10 killed, 14 hurt in Mali clashes

BAMAKO: Ten people have died in violent clashes between two ethnic groups in central Mali, a security ministry source told AFP Thursday, as tensions grow over land use and food scarcity in the region.

Increased availability of arms from Libya has also contributed to intercommunal violence in Mali, experts say, while drought has forced herders into areas traditionally cultivated by farmers.

A Malian security ministry source told AFP: “10 dead, 14 wounded” in a text message late Thursday, adding that material damage was also being assessed, and injured people evacuated the area.

Cattle rustling in the village of Tougou has angered traditional farmers who cultivate the land with their livestock, a local official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The farmers, members of the majority Bambara people, carried out reprisals Wednesday against Fulani people who they believed had stolen the cows.

Fulani people are frequently accused of criminality and colluding with militants who have sowed chaos in Mali in recent years, especially in the north but more recently in the center as well.

Adam Thiam, a Malian journalist who has written a book on the challenges facing the patchwork of ethnicities living in the country’s center, said Thursday the fragile balance of the region was under threat.

“The central region survives by a very delicate consensus between the different ethnicities... which until now have succeeded in living together,” Thiam said.

ROME: Around 250 African migrants are feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean after a charity’s rescue boat found five corpses and two partially submerged rubber dinghies off Libya, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

Laura Lanuza of Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms said its boat Golfo Azzuro had recovered the five dead bodies close to the dinghies, about 15 miles off the Libyan coast.

“We don’t think there can be any other explanation than that these dinghies would have been full of people,” she told AFP. “It seems clear that they sunk.”

She added that they would typically have been carrying 120-140 migrants each.

“In over a year we have never seen any of these dinghies that were anything other than packed.”

Lanuza said the bodies recovered were African men with estimated ages of between 16 and 25.

They had drowned, apparently in the 24 hours prior to them being discovered shortly after dawn on Thursday in waters directly north of the Libyan port of Sabrata.

Despite rough winter seas, migrant departures from Libya on boats chartered by people traffickers have accelerated in recent months from alreadyrecord levels.

Over 5,000 people have been picked up by rescue boats since Sunday, bringing the number brought to Italy since the start of 2017 to over 21,000, a rise of more than half compared to the same period in previous years.

Aid groups say the accelerating exodus is being driven by worsening living conditions for migrants in Libya and by fears the sea route to Europe could soon be closed to traffickers.

Prior to the latest fatal incident, the UN refugee agency had estimated that some 440 migrants had died trying to make the crossing from Libya to Italy since the start of 2017.

That figure, also sharply up on previous years, is based on a combination of bodies recovered and testimonies from survivors of shipwrecks.

More than half a million migrants reached Italy from Libya between late 2013 and the end of last year.

And if the trend of the opening weeks of 2017 continues, another 250,000 will have to be accommodated this year by Italy’s over-stretched facilities for asylum seekers.

Against that backdrop, Italy has stepped up cooperation with Libya with the aim of deterring boat