Mali: ‘neutralized’ 57 terrorists after telling French troops to leave

The Mali army says it “neutralized” 60 terrorists following a clash with armed Takfiri militants in the northeast of the West African nation.

In a statement, the army said columns of militants on motorbikes had pinned down one of its units, but the army-backed by the air force killed 57 of them in the tri-border area near Burkina Faso.

Eight Malian soldiers were also killed, 14 others injured and four are missing in the clash which included the air force striking a “terrorist base”, it added.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are struggling to contain armed militants linked to al-Qaeda and Daesh that control swathes of territory in the porous border area of the West African Sahel that is larger than the size of Germany.

The blow to the terrorists comes as Mali on Friday asked France to withdraw troops from its territory “without delay”, calling into question Paris’ plan for a four- to six-month departure.
Mali has also asked the smaller European Takuba group of Special Forces, which was created in 2020, to rapidly depart from the impoverished country.

President Emmanuel Macron responded with a statement claiming that he would not compromise the safety of French soldiers and the withdrawal will take place “in an orderly fashion.”

Paris had declared on Thursday that it would withdraw thousands of troops from Mali due to a breakdown in relations with the country, a decade after launching a war without the initial approval of the United Nations or the French parliament.

The decision applies to both the 2,400 French troops in Mali, where France first deployed in 2013 and a European force of several hundred soldiers that was created in 2020.
Mali’s armed forces spokesperson Souleymane Dembele shrugged off France’s announcement, insisting that European troops had failed to curb militancy.

“I think that there has been no military solution because terrorism has engulfed the entire territory of Mali,” he said.

Tensions have been mounting after Mali expelled its French envoy over what the country described as “hostile and outrageous” comments by the former colonial power.

Mali’s prime minister earlier this month blasted France for attempting to divide his country during a foreign military mission against terrorist groups.

Choguel Kokalla Maiga, head of the government that came to power in June 2021, said the French intervention “later turned into a de facto partition of the country.”

France’s military mission in Mali began in 2013 to purportedly counter militants. Paris also deployed thousands of soldiers to presumably prevent separatist forces from reaching Mali’s capital, Bamako.

The war caused several thousand deaths and more than a million people to flee their homes. There have been two military coups in little over a year, amid growing demonstrations against France’s military presence.

On Friday, a local official said militants had killed nearly 40 civilians caught up in a turf war between warring groups in northern Mali.

There were “at least 40 civilian deaths in three different sites” during a week of bloodshed in the Test area near the borders of Burkina Faso and Niger, said the official.

“These civilians had been accused by one group of complicity with the other group,” the official added, referring to rival militant factions active in the area.

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Test sits in the “three borders” area — a hotspot of militant violence – where alleged Daesh-linked EIGS group and the al-Qaeda-linked GSIM alliance of militants in the Sahel region remain particularly active.

As well as attacking local and foreign troops, the militants have also been fighting each other for territory since 2020.

France has been one of the world’s colonizing countries that after many years of slavery still controls countries spread over more than 12 territories and treats their people as second-class citizens.

It has had more than 50 military interventions in Africa since 1960 when many of its former colonies gained nominal independence. Mali remains among the poorest countries in the world, but that’s not due to a lack of resources.

France currently has 5,100 troops in the arid and volatile Sahel region. Under a new plan, they will be reduced to 2,500-3,000 troops. Analysts say it is premature to call it the end of the war, but that France is entering into a new phase of the war.

Although France remains the only Western country with a significant military presence in the Sahel, its relationship with its former African colonies has grown increasingly tense in recent months. This has led to an evident increase in anti-French sentiment.