Six people were killed in Mali, including two gendarmes and a policeman, in a rare attack near Bamako, the Ministry of Security announced on Friday evening. The attack took place the night of Thursday to Friday, at “some 70 km from Bamako», «at the Zantiguila checkpoint, on the road to Ségou“, in the center of the country, according to the ministry. She did “six dead“, including three civilians in addition to the three members of the security forces, and two wounded.
There had almost never been an attack in this area, so far almost preserved from the violence raging in the north and center of Mali. It was on the same road linking Bamako to Ségou that a policeman was killed on June 24 in Fana, in the attack on a police station, by “unidentified armed individualsaccording to the police.
The suspects have not yet been identified
The attack in Zantiguila was carried outby unidentified armed individuals“, specifies the Ministry of Security. The latter, General Daoud Aly Mohammedine, made a visit to Zantiguila on Friday to “observe the damage and reiterate the safety instructions“.
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Mali, a poor and landlocked country in the heart of the Sahel, was the scene of two military coups in August 2020 and May 2021. The political crisis goes hand in hand with a serious ongoing security crisis since the outbreak in 2012 , separatist and jihadist insurgencies in the North.
The ruling junta in Bamako has turned away from France and its partners, in favor of Russia, to try to stem the spread of jihadism which has spread to the center of the country as well as neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. This violence caused thousands of civilian and military deaths as well as hundreds of thousands of displaced persons.