A popular Malian TikTok influencer who often voiced support for the country’s military was abducted and publicly executed by armed men in Mali’s Timbuktu region, local officials said Monday.

Mariame Cissé, who had more than 140,000 followers on TikTok, was seized on Friday while visiting a market in Echel, said Yehia Tandina, mayor of Timbuktu. “The following day, around dusk, the same men brought her back to Independence Square in Tonka and executed her in front of a crowd,” he told The Associated Press.

Tonka, a village along the Niger River about 150 kilometers from Timbuktu, is known to be an area where al-Qaida-linked Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) operates. Although no group has claimed responsibility, Cissé had reportedly received death threats in the days before her abduction.

Local authorities said Cissé was not a member of the armed forces but often appeared online wearing military fatigues and expressing support for Mali’s ruling junta — content believed to have made her a target for extremists.

Mali has faced worsening violence since Islamist groups launched an insurgency in 2012. The military took power in a 2020 coup, followed by another in 2021, but insecurity has continued to spread across much of the country.

Armed groups, particularly JNIM, now control or influence large rural areas and have imposed a fuel blockade in parts of the landlocked nation, further straining daily life.