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Gunmen attacked a Malian army base in a dawn raid yesterday, killing 12 soldiers and burning the camp in west-central Mali.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. Central Mali has in the past few years been overrun by jihadists with links to al Qaeda. The unidentified armed assailants attacked the base in Guire district at 0500 local time (0500 GMT) after approaching in a convoy of 11 vehicles, local lawmaker Niame Keita said.
“There are casualties, at the moment they’re saying 12 killed. They burnt the camp and took equipment,” a local lawmaker said. In a post on Twitter, the army confirmed there had been an attack and said it had sent reinforcements, without giving further details.
In March, an al Qaeda affiliate said it was behind a similar overnight attack on an army base in the central region of Mopti in which 16 soldiers were killed. Escalating violence led to the resignation last week of the entire Malian government. The authorities have come under fire for failing to beat back militants and disarm militias, after a massacre of 157 villagers by an ethnic vigilante group shocked the nation in March.
Both Mali and neighboring Burkina Faso have been hit by the spike in hostilities fueled by Islamist militants seeking to extend their influence over the Sahel, an arid region between Africa’s northern Sahara desert and its southern savannas.
