A female TikToker accused of helping Mali’s army has been seized and killed execution-style by suspected jihadists.
Mariam Cissé, said to be in her 20s and with over 100,000 TikTok followers, posted videos about life in her Tonka hometown in the northern Timbuktu region and often expressed support for the army.
Her death has shocked the nation, which has been battling a jihadist insurgency since 2012. State TV said she had simply wanted to promote her community and support the army through her TikTok posts.
Mali is grappling with a fuel blockade imposed on the capital by jihadist groups that has severely disrupted daily life, with the African Union expressing “deep concern”.
Ms Cissé was seized by the suspected jihadists while live-streaming from a market in a neighbouring town, French public radio RFI reported.
“My sister was arrested on Thursday by the jihadists,” her brother told the AFP news agency, saying they had accused her of “informing the Malian army of their movements”.
Over the weekend she was moved to Tonka by motorbike and shot at the town’s Independence Square while her brother was in the crowd, AFP reports.
A security source told the agency she had been assassinated because she had been accused of filming jihadists “for the Malian army”.
In some of her TikTok videos, she wears military uniform, with one of her posts captioned Vive Mali (Long Live Mali).
Her death comes as the crisis caused by the jihadist blockade has worsened, with schools and universities remaining shut for weeks.
The government has suspended learning institutions since last month and said that it would do “everything possible to address the crisis” so that they would reopen on Monday.
The dire situation has persisted, and on Friday the French foreign ministry advised its citizens to urgently leave the country while commercial flights were available.
On Sunday, AU Commission chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf said he was concerned about the “rapid deterioration of the security situation where terrorist groups have imposed blockades, disrupted access to essential supplies, and severely worsened humanitarian conditions for civilian populations”.
He condemned the “deliberate attacks against innocent civilians” that had caused “unacceptable loss of lives and heightened instability”.
He added that the AU was ready “to support Mali, as well as all Sahel countries, during this particularly challenging period”.
For weeks, Mali has been hit by fuel shortages, especially in the capital Bamako, after militants from an al-Qaeda affiliate imposed a blockade by attacking tankers on major highways.
Mali is landlocked, so all fuel supplies are brought in by road from neighbouring states such as Senegal and Ivory Coast.
The military seized power in Mali in 2021 and promised to improve security, but the jihadist insurgency has continued and large parts of the north and east of the country remain outside government control.
