According to the security ministry, three of those killed were members or security forces personnel while three others were civilians.
According to the security ministry, six people were killed in Mali in an attack that took place near Bamako. This was a rare attack.
This landlocked country is located in the middle of the Sahel faces a continuing security and political crisis. Its volatile central and northern regions are the most vulnerable. Since 2012, an armed rebellion has been raging.
But the violence rarely reaches Bamako, in Mali’s southwest.
On Thursday night, about 70km (43 miles) from the capital, an attack took place “at the checkpoint of Zantiguila, on the road to the central city of Segou”, the security ministry said on Friday evening.
The attack was carried out “by as yet unidentified armed individuals”, leaving three civilians and three law enforcement officers dead, and wounding two others, it said.
A police station on the same road was ambushed by “unidentified armed individuals” on June 24, killing one officer, authorities had said.
Mali has struggled to stem violence that took root after a 2012 coup and has since spread from the West African country’s arid north into neighbouring countries. In the Sahel region, thousands have been killed and millions have been forced to flee.
Some of these groups are linked to al-Qaeda or the terrorist group. ISIL (ISIS). armed group.
The impoverished country – one of the most politically unstable in Africa – has seen two military coups since 2020.
Colonels, angry at the government’s handling of the long-running violence, seized power in August 2020, and then carried out another coup in May the following year.
The military government in Bamako has turned towards Russia – away from France and its partners – in an attempt to prevent fighters from spreading in the centre of the country and to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.
The friction caused by Bamako’s new ties with Russia, as well as the military’s continued delays in restoring civilian rule, has caused a France and Mali are at odds.
French forces are expected to withdraw from Mali within the next few weeks. This will shift the focus to Niger, which is seen as a front-line state during the campaign against armed rebels.
The violence left thousands of civilians and soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands homeless in the region.
