These simultaneous assaults have been claimed by the Katiba Macina, the Peltic Preacher Amadou Kufa.
Le Monde with AFP
On Sunday, April 24, the Malian army announced the death of six soldiers in three simultaneous attacks against military camps in the center of Mali. These attacks, carried out Sunday “around 5 hours” by “terrorist armed groups [which] used kamikazes vehicles stuffed with explosives”, did in total “six deaths” and twenty wounded in the three target camps, at Sevaré, Bapho and Niono, affirmed the Malian army in a statement.
These attacks have been claimed by the Katiba Macina, the Pelulum Preacher Amadou Koufa, in an audio message sent Sunday to the AFP by sources close to this group. This unit of fighters is subordinated to Iyad AG Ghaly, Head of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), linked to Al Qaeda. “This Sunday morning, the Katiba Macina Mujahedins hit three Camps des Fama [Malian Armed Forces],” says this audio message in Bambara, quoting Ségou, Bapho and Niono. “We hit these camps at the same time with an interval of five minutes. [In addition to the dead, they have been caused by hardware damage” and “destroyed camps”, added jihadists.
Ségou is not one of the camps cited by the Malian army, which mentioned Sevaré among the attacked camps, unlike the authors of the claim. According to the army statement, these attacks made six deaths among the Malian soldiers, fifteen wounded in Sevaré, a wounded in Bapho and four wounded in Niono. In Sevaré, eleven assailants died, “including kamikaze”, according to the army, which reports “a lot of military equipment” recovered in the attackers.
In addition, a Fama unit “on patrol” on the Moura-Tennenko (center) axis has been “taken in an ambush […] during which ten terrorists have been neutralized,” announced the army In another press release published Sunday night. Following Sunday morning attacks, the army “arrested three suspects in Sevaré, [who] were made available to the gendarmerie for investigations”, according to this separate communiqué.
A crisis Deep Safe
On Twitter, the UN mission in Mali has “firmly” condemned “attacks against Fama in Sevaré, Niono and Baphlo”. The Minusma says they have, “at the request of the Fama, immediately deployed a rapid reaction force to Sevaré”.
Plunged since 2012 in a deep security crisis that the deployment of foreign forces has not resolved, Mali has experienced two military coups since August 2020. Parts of the northern country, the jihadist violence Extended to the center and the south, before the conflict complicates with the appearance of community militias and criminal bands. The conflict has made thousands of deaths, civilians and combatants, and the center of Mali is currently one of the main homes of the Sahel crisis.
The power soldiers since 2020 have come closer to Moscow at the same time as they turned away from France, engaged militarily in the country against jihadists since 2013. Mali has massively appealed to what it presents As “instructors” from Russia, while Westerners (Paris and Washington in particular) denounce the presence in the country of “mercenaries” of the Russian Private Group Wagner, which Malian Colonels are firmly demented. On the background of diplomatic crisis with the Junta, Paris announced in February the withdrawal of his soldiers deployed in Mali, operation to be completed this summer.