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 July 15.
The attack took place the night of Thursday to Friday, at “some 70 kilometers from Bamako”, “at the Santiguila 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 individuals” according to the police.
Serious security crisis
The attack in Santiguila was also carried out “by unidentified armed individuals”specifies the Ministry of Security, headed by General Daoud Aly Mohammedine, who made a site visit on Friday to “Notice the damage and reiterate the safety instructions”.
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.