Mali's military has killed at least 34 people and disappeared 16 or more during recent operations in the war-torn centre of the Sahel state, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday.

The rights group made the allegations in a report based on dozens of interviews testifying to massacres and beatings allegedly committed by security forces in several towns and villages in central Mali between October 2020 and March.

The region has become the epicentre of a jihadist insurgency which first emerged in northern Mali in 2012 before spreading to the centre and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Jihadists and soldiers are often blamed for abuses against civilians in the brutal conflict, which has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

The HRW report said that soldiers blindfolded and "severely beat" dozens of passengers on a bus in the town of Boni on March 23 over suspicious material allegedly found in the baggage compartment.

At least 13 of those passengers have been "disappeared", the report said.

In October near the village of Libe, according to the report, soldiers killed 25 people, many of whom were trying to flee.

Overall, the report said at least 34 people were killed and 16 forcibly disappeared between October and March in the poor Sahel country.

"Mali's security forces have shown scant regard for human life during recent counter-terrorism operations," Corinne Dufka, HRW's Sahel director, said in the report.

"Committing serious abuses in the name of security only fuels recruitment into abusive armed groups and undermines trust by local populations," she warned.

HRW said that the latest alleged abuses had occurred since the military deposed president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in a coup in August.

It added that the interim government has pledged to investigate the findings.

Dufka said however that the Malian authorities had "failed to make good on many previous such commitments".

Rights groups regularly accuse Sahel armies of indiscriminate rights abuses.

In late December, UN investigators accused Malian security forces of war crimes, and jihadists and other armed groups of crimes against humanity.

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