At least four Malian army soldiers were killed and a dozen others wounded in an attack on Tuesday evening in Nara, in the west of the country, an area where jihadists are based, according to a provisional report by the Armed Forces Malian (Fama).

"  A Fama unit in the Nara region was the subject of a complex attack combining IED (improvised explosive device) attacks and heavy weapons  "   late Tuesday afternoon, the Malian army said in a statement. She did not specify who were the perpetrators of the attack, stressing that the provisional death toll stood at   "  four dead and ten seriously injured  "  .

This is not the first time that the army has been attacked in this part of Mali. An army camp was the target of an attack by armed men blamed on the jihadists in April 2019 in Guiré, which left 12 people dead, in the Koulikoro region, near the border with Mauritania.

Shell fire

The army also reports that the Niéna Territorial Brigade in the Sikasso region (extreme south of the country) was attacked early Wednesday evening, but "no military or civilian casualties were recorded  "  . Shell fire targeting the Hombori camp, in the Mopti region (center of the country)   "  was recorded  "   Wednesday evening, announced the army on   Twitter  , specifying that  "  no damage was recorded  "  .

Mali has been the scene since 2012 of operations by jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State organization, as well as violence of all kinds perpetrated by self-defense militias and bandits. The regular forces are themselves accused of abuses.

The violence that started in the north in 2012 spread to the center, then to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. They killed thousands of civilians and soldiers as well as hundreds of thousands of displaced people, despite the deployment of UN, French and African forces. The seizure of power in Bamako by the military following a putsch in 2020 has not stopped the spiral of violence.

Aprnews with Africanews