Fierce fighting has broken out in northern Mali with Tuareg rebels saying they have taken control of the town of Bamba from the army.<\/p>\n
It comes after the separatist fighters said they had killed more than 80 soldiers in the centre of the country.<\/p>\n
The government confirmed an army base in the Mopti region had been targeted on Thursday, but gave no details.<\/p>\n
The upsurge in violence comes as UN peacekeepers, deployed to Mali in 2013, withdraw on the orders of the junta.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
This has coincided with growing violence from Islamist militant groups, despite the deployment in December 2021 of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries.<\/p>\n
The army had already been targeted in Bamba earlier in September by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The rebels had once been allied to the Islamist militant groups who took over northern Mali in 2012 – a move which prompted France and then the UN to intervene to stop them advancing south to the capital, Bamako.<\/p>\n
The Tuareg groups went on to sign the Algiers peace agreement in 2015 with the government – but the jihadists persisted with attacks from their desert bases.<\/p>\n
This continuing insurgency was the main reason Mali’s military seized power in 2020, accusing the civilian government of failing to provide security.<\/p>\n
It pledged to end the militant attacks asking France to withdraw its forces and bringing in Wagner fighters.<\/p>\n
Yet violence targeting civilians has increased by 38% in Mali this year, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (Acled) in a recent statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n It said one al-Qaeda-linked group was responsible for 33% of attacks but it also blamed the military and Wagner for the increase, accounting for 29% of attacks, as they move into territory that been largely out of state control for more than a decade.<\/p>\n As part of these operations, it says they target civilians from various communities, believing them to be supporters of militant and rebel groups.<\/p>\n Acled says Wagner uses brutal tactics to instil fear not previously seen in Mali before, including “torture, summary executions, beheadings, ejection of prisoners from aircraft, and the booby-trapping of corpses”.<\/p>\n It warns the reawakened Tuareg rebellion and growing jihadist insurgency pose threats to the stability and security of civilian areas throughout Mali.<\/p>\n The UN is due to complete its withdrawal from Mali by the end of December.<\/p>\n