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Six people killed in rare attack near Malian capital Bamako | Armed Groups News


The security ministry said three of the dead were members of the security forces and three were civilians.

The security ministry said six people were killed in Mali, including two gendarmes and a police officer, in a rare attack near the country’s capital Bamako.

The landlocked country in the heart of the Sahel is facing an ongoing political and security crisis, especially in the volatile northern and central regions where an armed insurgency has broken out. since 2012.

But violence rarely reaches Bamako, in the southwest of Mali.

On Thursday evening, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the capital, an attack occurred “at the Zantiguila checkpoint, on the way to the central city of Segou,” the Ministry of Security said on Friday evening.

The attack was carried out “by unidentified armed individuals”, killing three civilians and three law enforcement officers and wounding two others.

Authorities said a police station on the same street was ambushed by “unidentified armed individuals” on June 24, killing one officer.

Mali has struggled to stop the violence that began in the wake of the 2012 coup and has since spread from the arid north of the West African country to neighboring countries. Thousands of people died and millions were displaced across the Sahel region.

Some groups have links to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) armed group.

The impoverished country – one of the most politically unstable in Africa – has seen two military coups since 2020.

The colonists, angered by the government’s protracted handling of violence, came to power in August 2020, and then staged another coup the following May.

The military junta in Bamako has turned its back on Russia – away from France and its partners – in an attempt to prevent the fighters from spreading in the center of the country and into neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

The frictions caused by Bamako’s new relationship with Russia, as well as the military’s continued delay in restoring civilian rule, have caused falls between Mali and France.

The French are expected to finalize the withdrawal of their forces from Mali in the coming weeks, shifting focus to Niger as a frontline state in the campaign against armed gunmen.

The violence has left thousands of civilians and soldiers dead and hundreds of thousands displaced across the region.



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