Fierce fighting has broken out in northern Mali with Tuareg rebels saying they have taken control of the town of Bamba from the army.
It comes after the separatist fighters said they had killed more than 80 soldiers in the centre of the country.
The government confirmed an army base in the Mopti region had been targeted on Thursday, but gave no details.
The upsurge in violence comes as UN peacekeepers, deployed to Mali in 2013, withdraw on the orders of the junta.
Thursday’s raid on the town of Dioura is the most southerly one since Tuareg rebels renewed hostilities in August after the collapse of a 2015 peace deal.
This has coincided with growing violence from Islamist militant groups, despite the deployment in December 2021 of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries.
The army had already been targeted in Bamba earlier in September by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.
In a social media post, the military said the clashes in Bamba on Sunday had begun at 06:00, describing them as “intense”. It did not name the fighters involved, only describing them as “terrorists”.
An alliance of Tuareg groups, including the Co-ordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), said in a statement that it had now taken control of the area around Bamba, a town on the left bank of the River Niger between the cities of Timbuktu and Gao.
The Tuareg rebels, who want independence for northern Mali, are opposed to the army taking control of bases vacated by the thousands of departing UN troops.
Source: bbc.com
