What occurred on January 3 in the remote village of Bounti, in the centre of the Sahel state, remains unclear.

Several residents, and an association promoting the Fulani ethnic group, said an airstrike hit the village during a wedding party, killing about 20 people.

Some of the villagers spoke of a helicopter attack.

Separately, the French military said that its warplanes had launched a strike nearby, but rejected that there had been any mistake.

"There can't be any doubts or ambiguity, there was no wedding," a senior military official told AFP.

On Monday, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Malian Association of Human Rights released a statement urging an independent investigation into the "confusion".

"Only an ad-hoc and independent commission of inquiry can help shed light on what happened", FIDH Secretary General Drissa Traore is quoted in the statement as saying.

The 13,000-strong United Nations' peacekeeping force in Mali, known as MINUSMA, has already launched its own inquiry.

Mali has been struggling contain a jihadist insurgency which first broke out in the north of the country in 2012, before spreading to the centre and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.