New findings reveal the Thiaroye bloodbath loss of life toll was far greater than reported, with as much as 400 victims.
Printed On 17 Oct 2025
A bloodbath of African World Battle II riflemen demanding pay for preventing for France in 1944 was premeditated, coated up and its loss of life toll vastly underestimated, in keeping with a paper submitted to the Senegalese president and seen by the information company AFP.
Based on French colonial authorities on the time, a minimum of 35 squaddies have been killed in the course of the bloodbath on the Thiaroye camp, close to the Senegalese capital Dakar.
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However a committee of researchers, led by historian Mamadou Diouf, who authored the 301-page report, put that determine at 300 to 400 deaths.
The doc, submitted on Thursday to Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, additionally calls on France to formally request forgiveness, AFP reported.
Beneath are the report’s details:
- The report “restores” info that have been “intentionally hidden or buried in plenty of administrative and army archives and launched sparingly”.
- “The true loss of life toll of the tragedy is troublesome to find out at the moment, particularly concerning the variety of useless and injured”, the researchers wrote. However they stated earlier experiences of some 35 or 70 deaths have been “contradictory and patently false” and that “greater than 400 riflemen vanished as if that they had by no means existed”. The “most credible” toll, they stated, is 300 to 400 deaths.
- The bloodbath “was meant to persuade people who the colonial order couldn’t be undermined by the emancipatory results of the Second World Battle”, the report stated. Because of this, “the operation was premeditated, meticulously deliberate and executed thusly in coordinated actions,” it added. If the riflemen had been armed, “they’d have defended themselves”, it concluded, including that “nowhere was the slightest act of resistance talked about”.
- The report moreover concluded that the killings weren’t restricted to the Thiaroye camp however that some have been possible killed on the prepare station.
Traditionally, roughly 1,300 troopers from a number of nations in West Africa have been despatched to the Thiaroye camp in November 1944, after being captured by Germany whereas preventing for France.
Discontent quickly mounted over unpaid again pay and unmet calls for that they be handled on a par with white troopers.
On December 1 that yr, French forces opened hearth on them.
“Within the days following the bloodbath, the French authorities did every part they might to cowl up” the killings, the report stated. This included altering the riflemen’s departure information from France and arrival information in Dakar, in addition to the variety of troopers current in Thiaroye and different info.
The report additionally concluded that “some administrative and army archives are inaccessible or inconsistent, whereas others have disappeared or been falsified”.
As a result of switch of paperwork to France, there’s a important absence of supply materials regarding the bloodbath in Dakar, the place the archives of France’s former West African colonies are concentrated, it stated.
Whereas the committee reported that its analysis benefitted from collaboration in French archives, it stated that “a number of of our questions and requests encountered a wall of smoke and mirrors”.
The researchers really helpful requesting that the European Courtroom of Human Rights “declare that the Thiaroye bloodbath is an enormous and clear violation” of the riflemen’s human rights.
It additionally known as on France to “formally specific a act of contrition to the households, communities and populations of the nations from which the riflemen got here”.
