Thread by @HillelNeuer

Death toll of civilians by French forces in Mali—including 19 at a wedding—is far higher than they admit.

Also completely disproportionate to the amount of French civilians killed.

So far, no EU calls for France to de-escalate its war & show restraint. thenewhumanitarian.org/investigations…

“Madabbel Diallo was attending a wedding, sipping tea with friends and relatives... Then came [France's] first devastating explosion, quickly followed by another, and then a third. Dead and mangled bodies—guests at what moments before was a celebration—littered the ground.“

“Diallo’s cousin, Mamoudou Diallo, was also caught in the bombing. When he came to his senses, nearly everyone around him was dead.“

“In the evening, Mamoudou recounted, the survivors 'picked up heads, arms, and feet and put them into a big hole to bury them'.“

French minister @florence_parly denied they bombed a wedding. “There were no women & children, men, only men.” But @UN_MINUSMA did 200 interviews, analyzed satellite imagery and visited the site. They found 19 civilians had been killed in the attack on what was clearly a wedding.

Though France normally fully backs the United Nations, here they questioned the credibility of the UN report, raising doubts over “unknown allegiances” of the witnesses, even saying @UN_MINUSMA was part of an “information war” against France.

“We must constantly be on the lookout for these manipulations,” said Général François Lecointre, then France's army chief of defense staff. “Very clearly [the UN report] was an attack against the French army, against Operation Barkhane, against the legitimacy of our commitments.”