The Malian army announced, Sunday, April 24, the death of six soldiers in three simultaneous attacks by "terrorist" groups having used "vehicles stuffed with explosives", against three military camps in the center of Mali, attacks claimed by a group linked to al-Qaeda.

These attacks left "six dead" and 20 injured in the three camps targeted in Sévaré, Bapho and Niono by "armed terrorist groups (who) used suicide bombers loaded with explosives", the Malian army said in a statement. communicated.

They were claimed by the Katiba du Macina of the Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa, in an audio message sent to AFP.

The Macina katiba is subordinate to Iyad Ag Ghali, leader of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM) or Jnim, according to its English acronym, linked to Al-Qaeda.

"This Sunday morning, the mujahideen of the katiba of Macina struck three camps of the Fama" the Malian armed forces, citing Ségou, Bapho and Niono, according to this audio message in the Bambara language.

Ségou, a locality in central Mali, is not one of the targeted camps cited by the Malian army, which mentioned Sévaré among the camps attacked, contrary to the authors of the claim.

"We hit these camps at the same time with an interval of five minutes. (Apart from) the dead, we caused material damage to them," the jihadists added.

Deep security crisis

Plunged since 2012 into a deep security crisis that the deployment of foreign forces has not been able to resolve, Mali has experienced two military coups since August 2020.

Starting in the north of the country, the jihadist violence spread towards the center and the south before the conflict became more complicated with the appearance of community militias and criminal gangs.

The conflict has killed thousands of civilians and combatants, and central Mali is currently one of the main centers of the Sahelian crisis.

The military in power since 2020 have moved closer to Moscow at the same time as they turned away from France, engaged militarily in the country against the jihadists since 2013.

Mali has thus 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" from the private Russian group Wagner, which firmly deny the Malian colonels in power.

Against the backdrop of a diplomatic crisis with the junta, Paris announced in February the withdrawal of its soldiers deployed in Mali, an operation to be completed this summer.

With AFP

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