Six Malian soldiers killed in ‘complex and simultaneous’ attacks

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.