On Thursday, January 10, a public bus operated by the Sonef transport company arrived on the outskirts of Konna, a small town 700 km north of Bamako, the capital of Mali.
It was market day in Konna, and soldiers at the checkpoint on the Konna-Gao road waved the bus through. At the next checkpoint at the entry to the town, soldiers clambered into the bus for a routine security check when the passengers gunned them down. Heavily armed Islamist rebels poured out of the bus, destroying the checkpoint as more fighters arrived in a convoy of jeeps and pickup trucks and fanned out across the town.
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