Suspected jihadists mounted an ambush Thursday on an army convoy in central
Mali that left 11 soldiers dead and 10 wounded, nine of them seriously, the
army said.
اضافة اعلان
"A bomb-laden vehicle exploded, followed by intense gunfire" in
the late-morning attack, the army said in a statement, calling the casualty
toll "provisional".
The ambush occurred near Douentza in the jihadist-infested
Mopti region,
about 600 kilometres from the Malian capital
Bamako.
The region is the epicentre of a deadly Islamist offensive that began in
northern Mali in 2012 and then advanced into neighbouring Burkina Faso and
Niger, inflaming ethnic tensions along the way.
Thousands of soldiers and civilians have died in the conflict to date and
hundreds of thousands of people have had to flee their homes.
Extremists linked to Al-Qaeda took control of Mali's vast desert north in
early 2012, but were largely driven out in a French-led military operation that
began in January 2013.
But huge areas are still in the grip of lawlessness, despite a 2015 peace
agreement with some armed groups that sought to definitively stamp out the
jihadist threat.
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