BAMAKO, Mali: Two attacks by al-Qaida linked insurgents in the restive north of Mali on Thursday killed 49 civilians and 15 government soldiers, the country’s military said.
A passenger boat near the city of Timbuktu on the Niger River and a Malian military position in Bamba further downstream in the Gao region were targeted, according to a statement from the military junta read on state television. It said the attacks have been claimed by JNIM, an umbrella coalition of armed groups aligned with al-Qaida.
The Malian government killed about 50 assailants while responding to the attacks, the announcement said. It said also declared three days of national mourning from Friday to honor the civilians and soldiers killed in the attacks.
Al-Qaida affiliated and Islamic State-linked groups have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, the United Nations said in a report last month, as they take advantage of a weak government and of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement.
The stalled implementation of the peace deal and sustained attacks on communities have offered the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates a chance “to re-enact the 2012 scenario,” they said.
That’s the year when a military coup took place in the West African country and rebels in the north formed an Islamic state two months later. The extremist rebels were forced from power in the north with the help of a French-led military operation, but they moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali in 2015 and remain active.
In August 2020, Mali’s president was overthrown in a coup that included an army colonel who carried out a second coup and was sworn in as president in June 2021. He developed ties to Russia’s military and Russia’s Wagner mercenary group whose head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a plane crash in Russia on Aug. 23.
