Three Malian soldiers were killed and five injured Tuesday during clashes with jihadists in the center of Mali, the army said overnight on social networks.
The army says it has “neutralized” seven jihadists during the fighting between Mopti and Ségou after several attacks perpetrated according to it using improvised explosive devices against its forces.
Mali has been haunted since 2012 by the spread of jihadism and a deep multidimensional, political, economic, and humanitarian crisis. The center is one of the hotbeds of violence that has spread to neighboring countries, Burkina Faso and Niger, and is spreading south.
The colonels who came to power through a putsch in 2020 and reinforced by a second coup in 2021 turned away from the former French ally and its partners and turned militarily and politically towards the Russians.
In a report by its secretary general presented to the Security Council on Tuesday, the UN writes on the contrary that the security conditions continued to deteriorate between June and December 2022 in the center of the Sahel, “in particular in Burkina Faso and Mali”.