Nearly 100 people have been killed in an overnight attack on a village in central Mali .

Attackers believed to be from the Fulani ethnic group raided a rival Dogon village early on Monday morning, officials said.

The raid took place in the Sangha district, where Fulanis from the neighbouring Bankass district descended on the Dogon village, Bankass mayor Moulaye Guindo said.

“Armed men, apparently Fulani, fired at the population and burnt the village,” said Siriam Kanoute, an official for the nearby town of Bandiagara.

Sangha mayor Ali Dolo said 95 charred bodies had been found so far, but the death toll was likely to rise as the village was still ablaze. “On a population of around 300 inhabitants, only 50 responded to the roll call,” said Mr Dolo.

Fighting between Dogon hunters and Fulani herders has killed hundreds since January, including an attack on a village in March in which over 150 Fulanis were killed by gunmen.

The latest attackers are suspected “terrorists,” Mali’s government said in a statement. “This carnage” also left homes burned and animals killed, the statement said. Security reinforcements were deployed to track the perpetrators, it added.

The violence has compounded an already dire security situation in the West African nation’s semi-arid and desert regions, which are used as a base by jihadist groups with ties to al-Qaeda and Isis.

These groups have exploited ethnic rivalries in Mali and its neighbours Burkina Faso and Niger in recent years to boost recruitment and extend their influence over vast swathes of territory.

The Malian government is seen as having lost its grip over parts of the country, having outsourced the fight against jihadists to vigilante groups with scores to settle.

The Dogon suspect the Fulani of harbouring Islamist militants, charges the Fulani deny.

French forces intervened in Mali, a former French colony, in 2013 to push back a jihadist advance from the north, but the militants have since regrouped.

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Mali’s government must address the arming of ethnic self-defence groups and the proliferation of arms in central Mali or “there is a high risk of further escalation that could lead to the commission of atrocity crimes,” the United Nations secretary-general said in his latest report on Mali last month.

The unrest in central Mali has displaced some 60,000 people, secretary-general Antonio Guterres wrote, adding that he was “appalled” by the surge in violence and its effect on civilians