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 Souma on February 9, 2019; [...] Two witnesses described an operation in Souma village, some 40 kilometers north of Arbinda, on February 9, during which 12 men detained on market day were, a few hours later, found dead some 10 kilometers away. One witness described the detentions and the "second helped bury the bodies. A witness said: I took my animals from the well, and as I entered the village—it was a market day—saw a large group of soldiers surrounding a dozen men seated on the ground. I hid, fearful I too would be taken and from there saw how they ordered all the men to bow their heads, yelling at them not to look the soldiers in the face. They started beating the men with batons and minutes later, ordered them onto a truck. The convoy was of three vehicles and about 10 motorbikes. A family member who helped search for and bury the bodies, found some nine kilometers away, said: The next morning, we searched for them, following the tire tracks, south, then north. We found our family nine kilometers away, near Tiallel hamlet. Their bodies were in two groups – the first five were lying side by side; they’d been shot in the chest; the other seven bodies were on top of each other, two-by-two; they’d been shot in the head or back. We were forced to bury them in two common graves." [...] 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." ^[+]