Mali's prime minister's office said on Thursday that more than 40,000 people had been registered at Kourémalé, a crossing on the Guinean border, after Guinea banned unregulated gold mining, and that thousands had already reached Bamako, the capital. It called the situation "a genuine humanitarian catastrophe", in a statement quoted by Guinee360 and relayed by Burkinabè outlet Espoir. The statement does not say over what period people were counted, whether each was counted once or what nationalities they are; Mali's crisis-management centre had said on Tuesday that the influx was of "various nationalities", AFP reported via BBC Afrique.
The statement followed a crisis meeting and a visit by the prime minister to two reception sites, Mamarybougou and Ouenzenbougou, which house people from the three states of the AES alliance: Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Recommendations included contacting the Guinean authorities "to understand what happened" and settling those turned back at a single site, Ouenzenbougou. That is a recommendation, not a completed move.
At the reception sites
DW found thousands of mostly young Burkinabè in Bamako who had been there for 72 hours, it reported on Thursday. They were gathered around a former hotel, a bus station and the Burkinabè embassy; some were minors, and many had reportedly walked dozens of kilometres from Siguiri, a gold-mining region in north-eastern Guinea. Malian youth groups brought food, and the International Organization for Migration and medical teams were present, a Burkinabè community leader told DW. One worker, who gave his name as Noufa, said he had reached Siguiri in early October and been told to leave as work was beginning.
The background
Guinea's joint statement, read on state television on 2 November, banned "anarchic" gold mining, citing environmental damage, BBC Afrique reported. It added that Guinea's government had not yet commented on the situation of the Burkinabè. Burkina Faso's security minister, Mahamadou Sana, said in Bamako on Wednesday that neither Mali nor Burkina had been told of the operation in advance and that some of his compatriots had been wounded, some by gunfire. He told the BBC that about 100 buses had been mobilised, 50 of them already on their way on Malian territory, for a return home. The BBC described the buses as under way, not as completed trips.