The prime minister of Mali visited the site of one of the country's worst massacres on Tuesday, pledging to step up security and reconciliation efforts after an attack that left scores dead and stoked fears for the fragile Sahel country.
The hours-long assault targeted a village in a largely ethnic Dogon enclave in central Mali.
It bore the hallmarks of the violence, much of it driven by ethnic tensions, which has claimed hundreds of lives in the last 18 months. Ninety-five people were killed, according to an early toll that remained unconfirmed on Tuesday.
Premier Boubou Cisse, who visited the village with other senior ministers, paid tribute to the "innocent victims of the discord and the hate", according to a government statement.
"All the victims of the horror and the barbarism remind us of the responsibility incumbent upon us as leaders to reinforce and accelerate security, economic and political efforts for peace and reconciliation," he said.
The attack on the village of Sobane Da -- also called Sobane-Kou -- began on Sunday evening and continued well into the night, according to witnesses.
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Survivors described attackers arriving on motorbikes and in trucks and surrounding the village of roughly 300 people.
They murdered anyone who tried to escape and torched their homes, the survivors said.
On Monday, a security source said the Dogon village had been "virtually wiped out".
The killing came less than three months after nearly 160 members of the Fulani ethnic group were slaughtered by a group identified as Dogon.
President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita cut short a visit to Switzerland and was expected to return to Bamako Tuesday.
"This country cannot be run by a cycle of revenge and vendetta," he told ORTM public television in Geneva on Monday.
He called on Malians to unite to "allow our nation to survive, because this is a question of survival."
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