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, [...] 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. [...] A witness to the killing of the three men in Guesse-Gorgadje at around 11 a.m., including Abdousalam Saidu Dicko, and his elderly father Boucom Dicko, said: I saw three vehicles and many motorcycles go straight to Abdousalam’s house, dragging him out, then to his father’s house, dragging him out as well. Another man was coming from the fields, making three. They went into their houses, but didn’t find any guns, and were asking questions in Mooré which they [victims] didn’t understand. Abdousalam said, “I will not go with you! If you are going to kill me, then kill me in my village.” That’s when they fired at all three of them behind the houses. The women were wailing, his wife tried to intervene, but they threatened to kill her. They didn’t ask for their ID’s. Is it normal for the security forces to kill people like this?” [...] 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." ^[+]