Bamako (AFP) - Jihadists and their separatist Tuareg allies hit Mali with fresh coordinated attacks Saturday, striking multiple towns and a prison just months after hobbling the country’s military junta with a similar wave of assaults.

The fighting comes after the Al-Qaeda-linked JNIM jihadists and Tuareg FLA separatists in late April captured the strategic northern town of Kidal and killed Mali’s defence minister.

On Saturday, they carried out their latest offensive in the northern localities of Gao, Anefis and Aguelhok, plus at least three central towns and a prison near the west African nation’s capital.

Since coups in 2020 and 2021, Mali has been led by the military. Its junta leaders had promised to restore calm in the vast desert nation that has been grappling with a security crisis since 2012, but so far have mostly failed to deliver.

The rebels’ various recent operations are meant to “contribute to weakening and isolating the regime”, Bakary Sambe, director of the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute, told AFP, predicting that they “are intermediate steps pending a more spectacular assault”.

The Mali military, backed by Africa Corps, the Moscow-controlled paramilitary group, has intensified operations following the large-scale April 25-26 attacks.

- Attacks in north, centre -

By late afternoon Saturday, much of the day’s fighting had died down.

The Malian army initially confirmed rebel assaults on Gao, Anefis and Aguelhok, plus the central town of Sevare and the Kenieroba prison, asserting that “these attacks were vigorously repelled”.

Later in the day it said it had also repelled attacks in the central towns of Konna and Somadougou with the help of Africa Corps, a rare public acknowledgement of collaboration with the group.

Despite the army’s claim of thwarting all attacks, a regional elected official said that rebels now control the town of Anefis, with Russians “entrenched in camp there” and “many” Malian military personnel taken prisoner.

FLA spokesman Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane had told AFP earlier in the day that “several positions” had fallen at Anefis.

The towns of Anefis and Aguelhok are the last remaining locations where Mali’s army maintains a presence in the northern Kidal region, following the April attacks.

Fighting had stopped by mid-afternoon in the strategic northern town of Gao and in Sevare, home to a large army base and an airport, local sources said.

The Malian army acknowledged one fatality in Gao, a toll that could be understated, and claimed to have “neutralized” a total of “20 terrorists” in Sevare.

The major prison complex in Kenieroba also came under attack some 70 kilometres (40 miles) southwest of Bamako.

There were no fatalities despite fires set to vehicles and other objects, according to a prison officer who said attackers outnumbered officers five to one.

The jihadists’ motives at the prison were not immediately clear.

Overall, the rebels’ “objective appears to be seizing and securing the north before moving further south”, an associate at the Strategic Research Institute of the International Academy for the Fight Against Terrorism told AFP.

- New allies -

Mali has been grappling with a security crisis since 2012 by jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group and community-based criminal groups and separatists.

In their joint assault in April, the Tuareg FLA (Azawad Liberation Front) and JNIM (the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims) took Kidal, which had been seized in November 2023 by the Malian army and allied fighters from the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary force now replaced by Africa Corps.

Mali junta leader General Assimi Goita has aligned the country with Russia, turning its back on its former colonial power France.

The rebels plus the Malian army and its Russian allies have committed “grave abuses” against civilians since the April attacks, Human Rights Watch said in a report last month.

Approximately a year ago, the Tuareg FLA teamed up with JNIM in an effort to combat their joint nemesis, the country’s military leaders. and Russian mercenaries.

A historically nomadic people, Tuaregs, who are spread across Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, have waged an armed struggle for decades against marginalisation, with action centred in particular around Kidal.

Meanwhile, JNIM had since September been waging a series of attacks on fuel tanker convoys heading for Mali’s capital, which reached its peak last October.

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