According to Human Rights Watch: "Human Rights Watch documented nine incidents that followed a similar modus operandi: dozens of security force members, travelling on both motorcycles and vehicles, mounted large operations on local market days. After surrounding scores of people who were conducting business at the market, the security force members detained up to 14 men and allegedly executed them, according to witnesses who found their bodies hours later, usually along the side of a road. Witnesses to these incidents described members of the security forces being accompanied by a few men in civilian dress whose faces were completely covered and who ‘indexed’ or identified, the men who were detained and later allegedly executed. The operations described by the witnesses occurred in the administrative communes of Arbinda, Tongomayel, Koutougou and, in one case, Baraboulé, and were: the alleged execution [...] of four men in Béléhédé on November 13 [2018]; [...] Four witnesses described the detentions and killings of seven men in two villages on November 13, 2018. They believed the same group of security force members were responsible for both incidents. Four men who had been detained on market day in Béléhédé at 10 a.m. were found dead a few kilometers away shortly thereafter. At around the same time, three more men including a father and son were killed in the nearby village of Guesse-Gorgadje. One witness said, “At around 10 a.m.I saw a convoy passing by our village from the direction of Béléhédé; a minute later a friend called from Béléhédé, screaming “they’ve just detained Amadou, Abdulaoi, Adama, and Issa! Tell our people to get off the road!” Just a few minutes later, I heard the sound of gunfire. Afraid the security services were still around, we stayed hidden for several hours but later found the bodies a kilometer away, on the side of the road. I saw clearly they’d been shot in the head and the chest.” [...] Witnesses to all but one of the incidents described above said the alleged perpetrators were dressed in dark yellow and brown camouflage uniforms which, as noted, is worn by members of both the gendarmerie and army. “It can be confusing; the gendarmerie and the army use the same uniform in some theaters of operation,” one security force officer noted." However, on the basis of interviews with the witnesses, security sources, and community leaders representing the major ethnic groups present in Soum Province, Human Rights Watch believes the majority of incidents described above were perpetrated by a detachment of gendarmes who, in August 2018, had been deployed to the town of Arbinda to respond to the growing number of armed Islamist attacks, including many of those which targeted civilians and are described above." ^[+]