BAMAKO, Mali
Six Malian soldiers were killed in the attacks on two army posts in central Mali on Sunday, the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) confirmed on their official website.
According to a press release, two
FAMa army posts in Boulkessi and Mondoro were attacked Sunday morning, with 6
Malian soldiers killed and another 18 wounded.
The Malian soldiers reacted
“energetically” to the two complex and simultaneous attacks, and were able to
neutralize “some thirty people on the terrorist side”, FAMa affirmed, adding
that about 40 motorcycles and a large batch of military equipment were was
seized.
No group has claimed
responsibility for the attacks.
Mali’s crisis was
triggered in 2012 when ethnic Taureg separatists, allied with fighters from an
al-Qaeda offshoot, launched a rebellion that took control of Mali’s north. But
the armed group fighters swiftly pushed over the Tuareg rebels and seized key
northern cities until they were driven out in early 2013 by French troops,
together with Malian forces and soldiers from other African countries.
The previous attack on the two
army positions in Boulkessi and Mondoro, on the border with Burkina Faso, on
Sept. 30, 2019, killed 40 Malian soldiers. The attack was claimed by the
terrorist group Support Group for Islam and Muslims (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa
al-Muslimeen, JNIM).
Since 2012, the security
situation in the Sahel region has been worrying, starting with the coup d’etat
in Mali in 2012.
Despite a French military intervention that is still underway in this West African country and the peacekeeping mission of the United Nations, the terrorist threat persists in central and northern Mali.
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