The jihadist attack on Tuesday against the military airport and the Gendarmerie school in Bamako, the capital of Mali, left dozens dead and hundreds wounded. Although there are no official figures because the government does not report its casualties in the fight against terrorists, various sources in the security sector have reported in recent days the seriousness of the incident: between 50 and 80 dead, almost all of them aspiring gendarmes, and more than 200 wounded. In addition, several planes were damaged. The local branch of Al Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the attack, admits 10 dead in its ranks, as well as six aircraft destroyed.
The double terrorist attack is the most serious to hit the Malian capital since the start of the jihadist insurgency in 2012 and the first to have been successful against military targets in the heart of the city. It began shortly before dawn on Tuesday, when dozens of jihadists, members of the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), managed to force their way into the gendarmerie school in Faladie, in the heart of Bamako, and into the military base 101 in Senou. This facility houses the military airport and hosts dozens of mercenaries from the Russian private company Wagner. Residents in the area, located in the south of the capital, woke up to the sound of gunfire and explosions.
The army has acknowledged “some loss of life”, but the information published so far points to dozens of fatalities. The Malian newspaper The eveningHe claims that among the gendarme candidates alone there were “about fifty deaths” while a confidential report cited by the digital media Young Africa The death toll is 81. In any case, this is the worst attack in the Malian capital. The most serious precedent occurred on November 20, 2015, when two jihadists broke into the Radisson Hotel and killed 20 people. Also, on July 22, 2022, a car bomb against the Kati military base, 15 kilometers from the city, killed one soldier and injured five others.
This double attack leaves behind a great feeling of insecurity. Because it has revealed, on the one hand, the capacity of the main jihadist actor in the region to carry out complex operations in the heart of the capital and, on the other, the failures in terms of security even in military installations of a regime that feeds a narrative of victory against the terrorists. On Tuesday, some residents identified and lynched citizens of the ethnic group peleul for their alleged complicity or direct participation in the attacks, according to a Bamako resident who remains anonymous. “Some were doused with petrol and burned alive,” said this source by telephone.
Since 2012, Mali has been facing a dual conflict with different connections. On the one hand, a Tuareg rebellion that broke out in the north of the country and, after the failed Algiers agreements, was reactivated last year. On the other, a jihadist insurgency that subsequently spread to Burkina Faso and Niger. Both conflicts have left behind more than 40,000 dead and some four million refugees and internally displaced people. The rise to power of military juntas in the three countries has aggravated the war, especially since 2022, with the emergence of Wagner’s Russian mercenaries as allies of the Malian army. Since then, there have been systematic massacres of civilians, such as that of Moura at the end of March 2022, which cost the lives of half a thousand people.
Over the years, capital cities have been plagued by attacks such as the one on the Radisson in Bamako in 2015 and the one on the La Terrasse bar that same year. In Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, other attacks in 2016 caused 30 deaths after members of a jihadist cell began shooting at the customers of two bars and a hotel frequented by expatriates.
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