Armed group kills 17 soldiers at Mali base: ministry

BAMAKO: Seventeen soldiers were killed and 35 wounded in central Mali on Tuesday in an assault on their base that authorities called a “coordinated terrorist attack”.

“The toll has increased: we have lost 17 men and 35 are wounded,” Mali’s defence minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly said. Authorities had earlier announced that 12 soldiers were killed.

Coulibaly called the assault a “coordinated terrorist attack on our positions,” but did not say who was responsible.

In the hours after the assaults two groups — one extremist, the other ethnic — both claimed to have carried out the raid on the military camp in Nampala.

Extremist group Ansar Dine said in a message that it carried out a “huge attack” that had killed “dozens of soldiers and wound(ed) large numbers,” according to the US-based group SITE that monitors extremist communications.

Ansar Dine, which is one of several active groups roaming Mali’s north, also claimed to have taken control of the army barracks and carried off a large quantity of “spoils”.

Earlier on Tuesday, a group from the ethnic Peul community, calling themselves the National Alliance for the Protection of Peul Identity and Restoration of Justice (ANSIPRJ), said they had killed eight troops in the attack.

“It was self-defence,” Sidy Cisse, a senior ANSIPRJ commander, said, adding three of his men were hurt. The group also claimed to have wounded 11 soldiers, as well as making off with two trucks and five pick-up trucks.