Mali: Army Says 8 Soldiers And 57 Fighters Killed In Clashes

Eight Malian soldiers were killed, 14 others injured and four are missing following a clash with fighters in the northeast of West African nation, the defence ministry said. The ministry said late on Friday that columns of fighters on motorbikes had pinned down the unit, but the army, backed by the air force, killed 57 of them in

the tri-border area near Burkina Faso. The troops were also targeted by unidentified armed men in the Archam region near the border with restive Burkina Faso and Niger, the statement said. About 40 civilians were killed this week in this zone where rival armed groups, also including ISIL (ISIS), operate, locals told the media. The

civilians were also considered to be loyal to rival armed groups, according to the local sources. Mali is at the epicentre of a Sahel-wide conflict, which has also killed thousands of soldiers and civilians and displaced some two million people. Rebel groups linked to al-Qaeda and the ISIL control swaths of territory in the porous border

areas of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The latest attack comes as Mali’s ruling military government also asked France on Friday to withdraw troops from its territory without delay, calling into question Paris’s plan for a four to six-month departure and highlighting breakdown in relations between Paris and its former colony. Mali

has also struggled to regain stability since 2012, when ethnic Tuareg rebels and loosely aligned armed groups seized the northern two-thirds of the country. Forces from the former colonial power France intervened and helped defeat the armed groups in the 2013, but the fighters regrouped in the desert and began carrying out

regular attacks on the army and the civilians. They have since exported their methods to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger where violence has also skyrocketed in recent years, leaving a grave humanitarian crisis in its wake. The France has about 4,300 troops in the Sahel region, including 2,400 in Mali. Its so-called Barkhane

force is also involved in Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. A statement also signed by France and its African and European allies on the Thursday said that multiple obstructions by the Mali’s military government meant that the conditions were no longer in place to operate in the country. The France and fifteen European countries in the December also condemned the Malian

authorities’ decision to allow deployment of personnel from the Russia’s Wagner Group, which has reportedly started operating in the country and is accused of rights abuses in the Central African Republic, Libya and Syria. The withdrawal decision applies to both Barkhane and the Takuba European force that France had been trying to forge along with its allies.