 On the evening of 8 September 2012, 17 unarmed Dawa Tablighi preachers from Mauritania arrived in Dogofry, north of Diabaly, in a Toyota minibus, on their way to a religious conference in Bamako.A group of Malian army soldiers arrested the preachers and executed all but one of them.Associated Press attributed responsibility for the executions to "rank-and-file soldiers [who] carried out the massacre of their own accord, ignoring not only the normal rules of engagement but also their own command structure."