Islamic militants attacked a military training camp and other locations in Mali’s capital Tuesday, sparking deadly gunbattles and the temporary closure of a nearby airport before troops were able to subdue the assailants, officials said. No details of casualties were immediately released.
The militants tried to infiltrate the Faladie gendarme school in Bamako in a rare attack for the capital, prompting a sweep by government troops who later were able to "neutralize" the attackers, army Chief of Staff Oumar Diarra said on national TV, without elaborating.
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The attack caused "loss of life and material damage," a security official told The Associated Press, but didn’t provide numbers or details. At least 15 suspects were arrested, said the official, who was inside the training camp at the time of the attack. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to reporters.
Later, the military said that the militants also had attacked other locations, but did not provide details.
The al-Qaida-linked militant group JNIM claimed responsibility for the attacks on its website Azallaq. Videos posted by JNIM on the site show fighters setting a plane at the airport on fire. The group claimed to have inflicted "major human and material losses."
This video grab shows Malian security personnel detaining a man after Mali's army said a military training camp in the capital Bamako has been attacked early Tuesday, Sept. 17 2024. (AP Photo)
An AP reporter heard two explosions in the area earlier Tuesday and saw smoke rise from a location on the outskirts of the city where the camp and airport are located.
Soon after the attacks, Mali’s authorities closed the airport, with Transport Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ould Mamouni saying flights were suspended because of the exchange of gunfire nearby. The airport reopened later in the day.
The U.S. Embassy in Bamako told its staff to remain at home and stay off the roads.
Mali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for more than a decade battled an insurgency fought by armed groups, including some allied with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russian mercenary units for security assistance instead.
Since taking power, Col. Assimi Goita has struggled to stave off growing attacks by the jihadis. Attacks in central and northern Mali are increasing. In July, approximately 50 Russian mercenaries in a convoy were killed in an al-Qaida ambush.
The mercenaries had been fighting mostly Tuareg rebels alongside Mali’s army when their convoy was forced to retreat into jihadi territory and ambushed south of the commune of Tinzaouaten.
Attacks in the capital of Bamako are rare, however.
"I think JNIM wanted to show they can also stage attacks in the south and in the capital, following the battle on the north near the Algeria border where Wagner suffered losses," said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which promotes democracy.
In 2022, gunmen struck a Malian army checkpoint about 60 kilometers (40 miles) outside the city, killing at least six people and wounding several others. In 2015, another al-Qaida linked extremist group killed at least 20 people, including one American, during an attack on a hotel in Bamako.
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Tuesday’s attack is significant because it showed that JNIM has the ability to stage a large-scale attack, Wassim Nasr, a journalist and senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, told the AP.
It also shows that they are concentrating their efforts on military targets, rather than random attacks on civilian targets, he said.