An Al Qaeda affiliate and Tuareg rebels yesterday claimed responsibility for co-ordinated attacks across Mali, in one of the boldest operations insurgents have mounted in their campaign against the military-led government.
Mali’s army said it killed “several hundred” assailants and repelled the assault, which hit multiple sites in or near the capital, Bamako. It said a large-scale sweep operation was underway in Bamako, the nearby barracks town of Kati and elsewhere in the gold-producing country.
Al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat Al Islam Wal Muslimin (JNIM) issued a statement, published by SITE Intelligence Group, claiming responsibility for attacks in Kati, on the Bamako airport and in localities further north, including Mopti, Sevare and Gao.
It also said the city of Kidal was “captured” in an operation co-ordinated with the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg-dominated rebel group.
FLA spokesperson Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane earlier said on social media that its forces had taken control of positions in Gao and one of two military camps in Kidal.
“This looks like the biggest co-ordinated attack for years,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
The US embassy told its citizens to shelter in place and Britons were advised against travel to Mali, where the army said it had been attacked by unidentified “terrorist” groups.
The airport was closed, with flights turned back or cancelled. South of Bamako, people trying to access the airport had found themselves almost inside a combat zone, with heavy gunfire nearby and helicopters overhead, one passenger said.
Two explosions and sustained gunfire were heard shortly before 6am near the military’s main base in Kati, north of Bamako, and shots were still ringing out there more than four hours later, a Reuters witness and two residents said.
Two witnesses said Mali Defence Minister Sadio Camara’s house in Kati was destroyed in the attack.
A witness in the central town of Sevare said shooting began there at 5am and that gunfire had come from all directions.
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