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288 CHAPTER 6respond in attacking Songhay villages. The number of victims on both sidesgrew larger with every attack as the conflict dragged on. On 12 June the Armykilled between 26 and 60 Kel Tamasheq and Bidân in the vicinity of Anderamboukane.The next day, the Ganda Koy and regular army units attacked a nomadcamp between Niafunké and Léré, killing an estimated 25 inhabitants. Thatsame day and the day after, pogroms ended the lives of around 75 Kel Tamasheqand Bidân inhabitants of Timbuktu. Most of the victims belonged to thecity elite of merchants and administrators. Simultaneously the Ganda Koy ambusheda caravan on its way back from the Taoudenit salt mines, killing 60caravaneers. On 19 June the Ganda Koy killed 160 inhabitants of a refugeecamp near the village of Ber and in the village itself. 64 In that month alone, anestimated 450 people died under Ganda Koy attacks. Those who managed toflee the killings wrote desperate reports to the outside world.About ethnic cleansing in Timbuktu city and vicinityDate, 15 June 94Crimes committed by the Malian Armed Forces and Ganda Koy movement andvigilante brigade – commanded by Lieutenant Abdoulaye Cissé called Blo andSabre Kouyta and Chabone Barka and Casounké and Hamidou Mahamane Siréy –and commander of red berets sent to Timbuktu on 29 May. AEM 26 of the MalianArmed Forces has made an airlift 2 flights/day for 14 days and [on] each flight 55persons [from] the red berets and the paratroopers and their material [arrive]. Ontheir arrival [they are] deployed in the northern neighbourhood – east and centretown. Instead of going to their barracks they are quartered in Arab and Tamasheqhouses and their Headquarter is in the Badjindé neighbourhood [in centre of Timbuktu]so they do not have a mission order which [is signed by the] local commandernor the governor of Timbuktu. (...) They have transformed the city ofTimbuktu into their Head Quarter to massacre the Tamasheq and Bidân and thenotable groups pay these soldiers. [for] Each Tamasheq or Arab, they get 200,000CFA. [for each] Individual killed. The house of each killed person is looted if he issedentary and if he is a nomad his animals are confiscated. All valuable objects areseized. Bracelets, rings, shoes, boubous – etc – Their bodies are thrown to the vulturesor on the dunes for the wild animals (...). 65These and other messages arrived at Amnesty International and other humanrights organisations, but their reports on the situation in Northern Mali remainedwithout much consequence. In other times they might have made headlines in6465‘Le lieutenant Abdoulaye Cissé dit Blo: le tueur de Ber demasqué’, Union, 19/07/1994; ‘Droit de réponse à M. Houday ag Mohamed’, Union, 13/09/1994; AmnestyInternational, Mali: Ethnic conflict and killings of civilians (21 September 1994).Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6a98714.htmlag Mohamed Abba, H., Association des Refugiés et Victimes de la Répression del’Azawad, Appel aux institutions qui défendent les Droits de l’Homme (30/06/1994).Handwritten document. Personal archives.