In an ambush on Sunday in the west of the Sahel, which was plagued by jihadist attacks, four Malian gendarmes were killed and three injured, the gendarmerie said.
Two Gendarmerie vehicles were burned and two others, topped with machine guns, were captured by the attackers during this operation carried out in Kouala, she added. Two attackers were killed and others captured.
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In their statement, the gendarmerie did not specify who was responsible for the attack. The gendarmes, like the army, the foreign armed forces and everything that represents the state are the targets of the jihadist groups.
Since 2012, Mali has been suffering from the spread of jihadism and a deep, multidimensional, political, economic and humanitarian crisis. Starting in the north, the violence has mainly affected the center and the east and has spread to the neighboring countries of Burkina Faso and Niger. But it’s not sparing the west, moving south, alarming Mali’s other neighbors like Senegal.
The junta, which has been in power since 2020, has turned its back on former ally France and its partners in favor of the Russians militarily and politically. She claims to have been on the defensive cornering jihadists with ties to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State organization.
Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maïga last week declared that there was no longer any part of the territory that the army could not enter, while the authorities previously admitted that two-thirds of the territory was outside the army’s control.
However, this security finding is contradicted by experts and a recent UN report, according to which the security situation in the central Sahel region has continued to deteriorate, “particularly in Burkina Faso and Mali”.