Six people killed in latest Mali massacre

Six people have been killed when armed men attacked Dogon villages in central Mali, local officials and a security source, days after a massacre took place amid ethnic tensions. 

The UN mission called for an end to the "spiral of violence" afflicting the region with revenge attacks between the Dogon and Fulani taking place.

On Saturday a raid on the village of Ogassogou, home to the Fulani herding community, near the town of Mopti, saw 160 murdered.

A militia from the Dogon ethnic group - a hunting and farming community with a long history of tension with the Fulani over land - is suspected to have carried out Saturday's raid.

"This spiral of violence must cease immediately," the UN mission in Mali, MINUSMA, said in a statement.

A local councilor in the area, Oumar Diallo, said the Dogon village of Ouadou was "attacked by armed men".

"Houses were burnt, the provisional death toll is four dead. In another village around Bankass, two women were also killed," he told AFP. 

Mali's military confirmed the death toll, as did MINUSMA, which said the attack occurred at night sometime between Monday and Tuesday with "several houses were torched, cattle were stolen".

The UN rights office in Geneva said earlier Tuesday it had sent a team of investigators to the region.

Saturday's raid was the deadliest attack in Mali since the 2013 French-led military intervention, which drove back al-Qaeda linked groups that had taken control of the north of the country.

In the centre of the country, ethnic violence had plagues the region.

The Fulani have been accused of supporting a jihadi preacher, Amadou Koufa, who rose to prominence in central Mali four years ago with militias emerging in the Dogon community to "provide protection" against the insurgents. 

These armed groups have launched a number of attacks on Fulani civilians.

Violence between the Fulani and Dogon and between the Fulani and Bambara ethnic group claimed some 500 civilian lives last year, according to UN figures.