Refugiée Tuareg

Khadijetou Walet Khalit

Khadijetou walet Khalit, Touareg, left Bamako at the end of January 2012 and travelled to Timbuktu in search of her mother and family. Phones weren't working and she was really worried about their whereabouts. By the time she reached this northern town of Mali her family had already left by foot moving towards the frontier with Mauritania. At the same time military and civilians had started to attack the homes of the touaregs based in Bamako destroying everything and creating a wave of fear in the touareg community that forced many to leave the country empty handed. ( those attacks of civilians were due to the news reaching the capital that a Touareg liberation movement had been fighting the Malian military forces causing a lot of deaths)
 The Malian army attacked the vehicle she was travelling with and she got really scared thinking her hour had arrived.  She finally met them on the 7th of February in the city of Fassala in the Mauritanian border. From there they all moved to the refugee camps of M'Bere.
At the refugee camp she worked with the Mauritanian Croissant Rouge. She has now been for a month in Nouakchott. There are today more than 70.000 refugees in the camps and at least 4.000 touaregs in the city of Nouakchott.