Africa-Press. Mali’s National Union of Road Haulage Drivers announced a general strike along the Bamako–Senegal border corridor, demanding the return of the bodies of colleagues killed in an attack on a fuel convoy in late January.
A fuel convoy was attacked on 29 January in western Mali, in an assault attributed to the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), aligned with al-Qaeda. The attack killed at least 15 drivers, while other accounts put the death toll at 18, in addition to the destruction of dozens of trucks and tankers. A security source said the attackers stopped the drivers before “executing them by gunfire with their eyes blindfolded,” describing it as an unprecedented incident: the group had not previously targeted drivers in a systematic way, although casualties had occurred in earlier attacks.
The union said the victims’ bodies have not yet been repatriated, prompting it to suspend all transport activity on the route linking Bamako, Kayes, and Diboli until a solution is found. Union spokesperson Aboubacar Coulibaly said drivers voiced deep outrage at their general assembly, stressing that operations would resume only after the bodies of their colleagues are recovered.
Since September, JNIM has imposed sieges on several Malian towns and continued to target fuel convoys, choking the local economy and increasing pressure on the capital. In November, the group declared that fuel-truck drivers would be treated as “military targets,” helping explain the latest escalation and raising broad fears about the future of road transport in the country.
