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Two attacks in central Mali claimed by Al Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 30 people, local, security and administrative sources told AFP.
Three sources – an aid worker, a diplomat and a security source – told Reuters, however, that the militants killed around 50 people, including members of pro-government self-defence forces and civilians, in the attacks yesterday.
The two strikes come less than a fortnight after a large-scale, co-ordinated offensive by religious militants and separatists on junta positions, which plunged the west African country into a fresh security crisis.
“At least 35 people were killed on Wednesday in near simultaneous attacks” on the villages of Korikori and Gomossogou, a youth official said.
A security and an administrative source both reported more than 30 dead in the assaults, claimed by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM).
WAMAPS, a group of west African journalists specialising in Sahel security, said the provisional toll was more than 50 villagers killed and several still missing.
“Villages have been looted and some properties set on fire,” the group added.
The Malian army said yesterday that it had carried out “a targeted operation against terrorist armed groups” in the area and around a dozen fighters were “neutralised”.
It did not give details.
The unprecedented assaults on April 25-26 by the JNIM and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), an ethnic Tuareg separatist movement, targeted strategic towns including Kidal in the desert north, and Kati, a garrison town near the capital Bamako.
Defence Minister Sadio Camara, the 47-year-old architect of Mali’s military alliance with Russia, was killed by a car bomb at his residence.
Kidal and other towns and villages in the north were captured and are now under the control of the FLA and the religious militants, who have since imposed a blockade on Bamako.
Since 2012, Mali has faced a deep security crisis fuelled in particular by violence from groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as local criminal gangs and pro-independence groups.
On April 30, the JNIM called for a “common front” to “put an end to the junta” and usher in a peaceful and inclusive transition.
The country has been under military rule since a back-to-back coups in 2020.
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