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BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Mali troops subdued the Islamic militants who attacked a military training camp and the airport in Mali’s capital Tuesday after gunbattles that killed some soldiers, authorities said. An al-Qaida-linked group claimed the attack.
The militants tried to infiltrate the Faladie military police school in Bamako in a rare attack for the capital before government troops were able to “neutralize” the attackers, army Chief of Staff Oumar Diarra said on national TV, without elaborating.
At least 15 suspects were arrested, a security official who was inside the training camp at the time of the attack told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to reporters.
“This cowardly and perfidious attack led to some losses of life on the army’s side,” the army said in a statement read on national television in the evening, confirming that trainees at the military training camp were killed but not saying how many.
Mali's army also confirmed the militants targeted the airport, in the statement.
The al-Qaida-linked militant group JNIM claimed responsibility for the attacks on its website Azallaq. Videos posted by JNIM show fighters setting a plane on fire. The group claimed to have inflicted “major human and material losses."
An AP reporter heard two explosions in the area earlier Tuesday and saw smoke rise from a location on the outskirts of the city where the camp and airport are located.
Soon after the attacks, Mali’s authorities closed the airport, with Transport Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ould Mamouni saying flights were suspended because of the exchange of gunfire nearby. The airport reopened later in the day.
The U.S. Embassy in Bamako told its staff to remain at home and stay off the roads.
Mali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for more than a decade battled an insurgency fought by armed groups, including some allied with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russian mercenary units for security assistance instead.
Since taking power, Col. Assimi Goita has struggled to stave off jihadi attacks. Attacks in central and northern Mali are increasing. In July, approximately 50 Russian mercenaries in a convoy were killed in an al-Qaida ambush.
Attacks in the capital of Bamako are rare, however.
“I think JNIM wanted to show they can also stage attacks in the south and in the capital, following the battle on the north near the Algeria border where Wagner suffered losses," said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which promotes democracy.
In 2022, gunmen struck a Malian army checkpoint about 60 kilometers (40 miles) outside the city, killing at least six people and wounding several others. In 2015, another al-Qaida linked extremist group killed at least 20 people, including one American, during an attack on a hotel in Bamako.
Tuesday’s attack is significant because it showed that JNIM has the ability to stage a large-scale attack, Wassim Nasr, a journalist and senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, told the AP.
It also shows they are concentrating on military targets, rather than random attacks on civilians, he said.
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Mednick reported from Goma, Congo, and Banchereau from Dakar, Senegal.