San Francisco Frontiers - Mali hit by new wave of coordinated attacks

The fighting, which started around 5:00 am (0500 GMT), came just over two months after the groups staged attacks against the ruling junta in which the country's defence minister was killed.

The new attacks were reported in the northern towns of Gao, Anefis and Aguelhok, plus the central town of Sevare and a prison at Kenieroba near the African nation's capital.

Since coups in 2020 and 2021, Mali has been led by the military, which promised to restore security as the vast desert nation grappled with a jihadist insurgency and separatist demands from Tuareg groups.

Tuareg rebels of the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) teamed up with the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) approximately a year ago, before launching their first coordinated attacks on April 25-26.

FLA spokesman Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane told AFP that "several positions have fallen" in Anefis but that there was still fighting.

- Army 'resistance' -

An Anefis resident told AFP that "armed groups are in the town, but the army is still putting up resistance. The camp (there) has not yet fallen".

The towns of Anefis and Aguelhok are the last remaining locations where Mali's army maintains a presence in the northern Kidal region, following the April attacks.

In a major blow to the junta, the strategic northern city of Kidal fell to the FLA in April.

In Gao, also in the north, residents told AFP of gunfire and "loud blasts" near an army camp.

In the central town of Sevare, "explosions rang out... around 5:00 am, though their origin is not yet known. Shortly thereafter, several aircraft were spotted flying over the area", a security source told AFP.

The Kenieroba prison complex, where jihadists and others are held, was also under attack some 70 kilometres (40 miles) southwest of Bamako.

"We are under our beds, the gunfire continues," one prisoner told AFP, before communications seemed to be cut off.

The Kenieroba Central Detention Center is the largest modern penal facility in Mali, with a more than 2,500-prisoner capacity.

- Coordinated attacks -

Mali has been grappling with a security crisis since 2012 over attacks by jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group and community-based criminal groups and separatists.

In their joint assault in April, the Tuareg rebels and jihadists took Kidal, which had been lost in November 2023 to the Malian army and allied fighters from the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary force now replaced by Moscow's Africa Corps paramilitary group.

Mali junta leader General Assimi Goita has aligned the country with Russia, turning its back on its former colonial power France.

Both jihadists plus the Malian army and its Russian allies have committed "grave abuses" against civilians since the April attacks, Human Rights Watch said in a report last month.

The April attacks were reminiscent of a 2012 crisis when Tuareg rebels allied with jihadists captured strategic hubs in the country's vast, remote north.

A historically nomadic people, Tuaregs, who are spread across Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, have waged an armed struggle for decades against marginalisation, with action centred in particular around Kidal.

Meanwhile, the JNIM had since September been waging a series of attacks on fuel tanker convoys heading for Mali's capital, which reached its peak last October.

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J.Scott--SFF