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Mali’s armed forces, supported by Russian mercenaries, have launched airstrikes targeting a rebel alliance of Islamist extremists and Tuareg separatists as the ruling junta struggles to maintain its hold on.
When al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic militants launched a series of attacks on military bases and raids into major towns in Mali and neighbouring Burkina Faso last summer, observers suggested they had been inspired by their counterparts in Syria, who had overthrown the regime of Bashar al-Assad and taken power six months or so earlier. The joint offensive launched last weekend by JNIM and its allies in Mali’s Tuareg minority community was carefully planned and coordinated. One was Mali’s defence minister, Sadio Camara, killed in a suicide attack on his residence in the garrison town of Kati.
When Assimi Goïta, the leader of Mali’s military junta, sat down with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the Kremlin last summer, it symbolised Moscow’s commanding sway over Mali at the expense of the.
Mali has been left reeling from sweeping attacks by jihadists and separatist rebels who seized several towns and military bases and killed the defence minister and military intelligence chief.The weekend.
Mali’s defence minister was killed in an attack on his residence, the government said on Sunday, a high-profile fatality during coordinated assaults staged the previous day by insurgents including the West African affiliate of al-Qaida. A firefight ensued, and Camara sustained injuries from which he later died in a hospital, Coulibaly said, adding that Mali would observe two days of mourning. The statement followed media reports earlier in the day that Camara had been killed during the operation in Kati, roughly 9 miles (15km) north of the capital, Bamako, where the army’s main base is located.
