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 12 men in N’gaika Ngota in October [2018]; [...] Twelve men detained on market day in N'gaika Ngota village in mid-October, were found dead the next day. A witness said: I’d taken my goods out to sell, the market had just started when, suddenly, the soldiers showed up in several pickups and a dozen motorcycles. A drone flew over us. They gathered us just west of the market. Once assembled, they organized us in groups to pass in front of four men in civilian dress, whose faces were masked. They pointed their finger without speaking and like this separated 12 people whom they immediately undressed, tied their hands behind their backs and threw into a military vehicle. The soldiers spoke in French and in Mooré, and fired in the air as they left, taking the little plane [drone] with them. Their bodies – all 12 – were found at the crossroads of Taouremba near Lahorde on the Dori-Djibo axis. For me they are not terrorists. They didn’t find them with weapons. [...] 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." ^[+]