(Bamako) Jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for a daring attack, the first of its kind in years, on Tuesday in the Malian capital Bamako, where they went so far as to temporarily take control of part of the international airport.
Images broadcast by the channels of the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM or JNIM according to the Arabic acronym) show fighters wandering around shooting randomly into the windows of the presidential pavilion which usually welcomes the departures and arrivals of the head of state and his guests.
A gunman calmly sets fire to the engine of a plane that appears to be part of the official fleet. Other images show thick smoke rising from the airport and the hangar of the presidential plane.
“A special operation [a cibl]) the military airport and the training center of the Malian gendarmes in the center of the Malian capital this morning at dawn, causing enormous human and material losses and the destruction of several military aircraft,” JNIM said through its communication channels.
The army general staff acknowledged in the evening that the attack had caused “some loss of human life”, notably among student gendarmes at the gendarmerie school, and damage in the airport area.
The attack was repelled, he said.
“The situation was quickly brought under control, all sites are under control,” the general staff said in a statement read on national television. “The combing of the area continues.”
PHOTO ORTM, PROVIDED BY AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Oumar Diarra
Television showed images of about 20 prisoners with their hands tied and blindfolded.
No precise and reliable human toll has been released, in a tense security context and strong restrictions imposed on the circulation of information under the junta in power since 2020.
Videos circulating on social media showed charred bodies presented as those of attackers or police officers, depending on the case.
The situation was confusing all day in the capital of this poor, landlocked country, which has been facing the spread of jihadism and a deep multidimensional crisis since 2012, following the outbreak of a surprise attack before dawn.
While some regions of Mali remain the prey of almost daily attacks, its capital had been preserved from violence since an anti-Western attack in March 2016 targeting a hotel housing the former European training mission for the Malian army.
The fighting continued into the afternoon with heavy exchanges of fire near the airport.
The gendarmerie school is located a few minutes by road from the airport sector, where the military airport adjoins the civilian installations.
An intelligence source reported the use of rocket launchers by the attackers.
Mali has been the scene of two coups, in August 2020 and May 2021. It has since been governed by a junta led by Colonel Assimi Goïta. Following him, its neighbors, Burkina Faso and Niger, have also seen military forces seize power by force.
Tuesday’s attack calls into question the narrative of Malian authorities who claim to have reversed the trend against jihadists in their favor. In 2022, jihadists carried out an equally audacious attack on the Kati military camp, a stronghold of the junta located about fifteen kilometers from Bamako.
Since 2022, the military in power has broken the old alliance with France and its European partners, to turn militarily and politically towards Russia.
They have multiplied acts of rupture, pushing the UN mission MINUSMA out and denouncing the agreement signed in 2015 with the independence groups in the north, considered essential to stabilize the country.
They founded an Alliance of Sahel States with the Burkinabe and Nigerien military regimes a year ago, and announced with them that they were leaving the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), accused of being subservient to the former French colonial power.