‘Situation Under Control’ After Insurgents Attack Mali’s Largest Military Base, Army Says

The Malian Armed Forces said on Friday that they had recovered from a morning attack by militants on a major military facility on the outskirts of the capital city of Bamako - a place where fighting has rarely been seen.

The attack came on Friday morning as explosions and gunfire were reportedly heard near the Kati military base, the MAF’s largest military base and its headquarters.

In a statement, the MAF said it had "contained... a desperate attempt" by Katiba Macina, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda*, to raid Kati base. Two vehicles packed with explosives detonated outside the camp, although an AFP journalist nearby reported hearing explosions inside the camp later on as well.

The MAF responded with special forces personnel and two helicopter gunships.

"The provisional death toll is two assailants neutralized. The situation is under control and clearing operations are underway to flush out the authors and their accomplices," the MAF said.

On Thursday, militants staged a series of attacks on outposts near the capital, including a police base in Kolokani, 37 miles from Bamako, killing two Malian soldiers. A week prior, at least three civilians and three law enforcement officers were killed by an attack on a checkpoint 43 miles east of Bamako, on the road to the central city of Segou.

Two weeks before that, a police station on the same road was ambushed by “unidentified armed individuals” who killed one officer.

Most of the fighting in Mali has been concentrated in the country’s north and east, where an armed insurgency has been raging since 2012. Frustration with the government’s handling of that uprising led to a military coup that year, but the coup only made matters worse, and Tuareg rebels seized nearly half the country. Bamako appealed to France, the former colonial ruler, for help, and Paris dispatched a military force dubbed Operation Serval to beat back rebels.

French soldiers patrol Timbuktu for the last time, in front of the Great Mosque, a few hours before the handover ceremony of the Barkhane military base to the Malian army in Timbuktu, on December 14, 2021.

The following year, Serval became the more wide-reaching Operation Barkhane, a War-on-Terror-style campaign across five Sahelian states that has achieved few gains in eight years. Last June, French President Emmanuel Macron declared an end to Barkhane, which had become enormously unpopular in both France and West Africa, and began bringing roughly half of the 5,000-strong force home. However, a smaller Task Force Takuba has remained, fighting Islamist rebels in the tri-state region of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali.

France and the EU have both since pulled their training forces out of Mali, claiming variously that they refuse to cooperate with Mali’s ruling military junta - itself brought to power in an August 2020 coup and solidified in a May 2021 coup hatched at the Kati base - or to work alongside alleged Russian advisers and private military contractors said to be operating in the country at the behest of the Malian government. Neither Mali, nor Russia, nor Wagner PMC, has made any statement affirming the alleged presence of Russian fighters in Mali.

Malian Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maïga has since accused France of carrying out “a de-facto partition” of the country, saying that Operation Barkhane “contributed to the sanctuarisation of our territories for the terrorists who had time to take refuge and reorganise themselves in order to come back in force.” The rebels include forces aligned with al-Qaeda as well as Daesh**.

In April, the Malian government announced a two-year transition period that would lead to new elections.

*Al-Qaeda: a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other nations.

**Daesh (ISIS, ISIL, IS): a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.