Mali says two more army posts attacked as jihadist violence escalates
Ground and air reinforcements were being mobilised on Thursday morning to respond to an attack on a security post in Mahou, located in eastern Mali near the border with Burkina Faso, an army statement said.
The attack was claimed by Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group active in Mali and Burkina Faso. Information on a death toll was not immediately available.
A military spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
On Wednesday afternoon "armed terrorists" struck a military camp in Tessit, near the border with Burkina Faso and Niger, and Mali's military sent in aerial reinforcement, a separate statement said.
There has been no claim of responsibility for that attack, though security analysts said it could have been perpetrated by fighters from the Islamic State branch active in the Sahel region.

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eNCA
8 hours ago
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Jihad or exile: Lake Chad's abandoned youth face impossible choice
Adam Issa struggled to explain why he quit his fisherman's job to join one of the many jihadist groups holed up in the hundreds of islands of Lake Chad. "Some of my friends who joined Boko Haram told me that I would make a lot of money with them," the baby-faced 20-year-old said, eyes fixed firmly downwards. At the end of another rainy season where he came home from the lake with his nets empty, Issa set off in his canoe and crossed the border on the water to join his friends at a jihadist camp in Niger, without telling his family. His story is far from unique on the shores of Lake Chad, which straddles Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria at the point where west and central Africa meet. AFP | Joris Bolomey Dire economic opportunities have made the region's struggling young people easy targets for jihadist recruiting sergeants, and pushed others onto a perilous path of exile in the hope of making money down faraway gold mines. Once arrived at the camp, Issa spent a month and a half in training, learning to fire a 12.7 mm calibre heavy machine gun, before abruptly fleeing to return to his home in the Fouli region in Chad. On what fighting he saw while a member of Boko Haram, he remained silent. - 'Turn into bandits' - Since his return from Boko Haram's embrace, Issa has made his home at the Maison des femmes (House of women) in the town of Bol, which today shelters some 40 repentant jihadists. Bol is the capital of Chad's Lac region, an underdeveloped part of an already underdeveloped nation. AFP | Joris Bolomey Its masses of out-of-work young men have proven a never-ending source of manpower for the armed groups stalking the lake's shores. Among them is Boko Haram, which has sown terror around Lake Chad for some 15 years. Founded in Nigeria at the beginning of the new millennium, the Islamist group achieved international infamy after the 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls, most of them Christians, in the north of the country. Today it faces stiff competition from the rival Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) group, which splintered off from Boko Haram in 2016. While the two are locked in infighting over ideological differences, both Boko Haram and ISWAP have mounted increasingly brazen attacks on villages and military bases in recent months. With violence mounting and the economy at a standstill, many across Lake Chad believe they have been abandoned by the state. AFP | Joris Bolomey "We have nothing to eat and as a result of this crisis our young people are turning into bandits," lamented Abba Ali Abakura, a traditional chief in the north of Chad's Lac region. Feeling "disgusted and overwhelmed", the 57-year-old also said he fears that "all the able-bodied men will leave the region" in the hope of striking gold at the mines of north Chad or elsewhere in the Sahel. "Only children and elderly people will remain." - Gold rush - That prospect of a golden ticket to a better life is exactly what pushed Mahamat Ali Abdallah to leave Chad. At less than $12 a month, his baker's wage in Baga Sola was far from enough to finance his dreams of getting married, having children and building a house. His thirst for gold led him first to Niger and then onwards north to Algeria to become a prospector, braving the hard labour and often dangerous conditions. Down the mines, he spent his days digging away at the bottom of narrow pits, which could reach a depth of up to 30 metres below the surface, in search of the precious mineral. "One day the earth collapsed on top of us," he said, showing videos of his fellow labourers. AFP | Joris Bolomey "I managed to escape unscathed but my friend had his bones broken." During his two years of tough toil, he sent half the money he made to his family and used the rest for his living expenses at the site. Having returned to Chad without a penny, he said he would leave again in search of more work. "Better to take that risk than to continue to live in poverty," he said. Sparse schooling and a lack of teachers have made the issue worse, with children forced to work in the fields as their parents cannot afford to send them to class in the cities, humanitarian organisations warn. Hassimi Djieni, project manager for the aid group Humanity & Inclusion, estimated there was a "ratio of one teacher for every 500 to 600 students" in the region. "The authorities have to understand that when you boost education, it creates a barrier against young people joining armed groups," said Djieni. By Joris Bolomey


eNCA
2 days ago
- eNCA
Mozambique insurgency grows at 'sensitive' time for TotalEnergies' return
MOZAMBIQUE - Jihadist insurgents in northern Mozambique have multiplied their attacks in the past weeks, causing mass displacements ahead of the possible resumption of construction on TotalEnergies' huge natural gas project in the region. A group affiliated with the Islamic State group, which has led a bloody insurgency in Cabo Delgado province since 2017, claimed responsibility for seven attacks in the south of the province in late July, including one in which they executed six villagers. Nearly 59,000 people were displaced to the small district of Chiure alone, Sebastian Traficante, who heads the local mission of Doctors Without Borders, told AFP. The region had not seen so many people forced to leave since February 2024, according to United Nations statistics. "There hasn't been a mass displacement like this for many months now, so it was a bit of a surprise," Traficante told AFP from a transit camp set up in the small town in the south of Cabo Delgado, where shelter was initially insufficient to host the "massive" influx of people, most fleeing on foot. "There were some people even sleeping under the open sky," toilet facilities were insufficient and "there was no food available", he said. Some families were separated in the chaos and lost their children, while others had to "hide in the bush until they felt it was safe to go to the next town", Traficante said. - Less protected area - The recent attacks were carried out about 100 kilometres (60 miles) further south from the area where the insurgents were previously active. "The terrorists fled their bases in Macomia, splitting into different groups and positioning themselves in various areas," a security source in Cabo Delgado told AFP. "They took advantage of the security forces' weak presence in Chiure to carry out raids and loot several villages," the source said. Mozambican troops and the Rwandan army, which has been deployed in the area since July 2021, are concentrated in the northern districts where the insurgency has been more frequent -- but also closer to TotalEnergies' liquefied natural gas project near the port town of Palma. As a result, the insurgents could remain in Chiure "from at least the 24th of July until the 3rd of August, when army reinforcements arrived," said Peter Bofin, who observes the Cabo Delgado insurgency for the conflict tracking organisation ACLED. "They had no engagements with state forces, police or army" during that time, he said. The Rwandan army, which is better equipped and has a base about 50 kilometres north of the area, near Ancuabe, did not intervene. - 'Tactical' - The attacks in the south of the province do not mean the jihadists have abandoned their positions in the north, Bofin said. "They are still there," he said. "It is quite tactical, we assume an attempt to stretch the Mozambican and possibly the Rwandan military -- If you stretch them, you make it more difficult for them to protect the north," he said. Attacks in Chiure also cause more panic and larger population displacements than in the north, where many residents fled long ago and have not yet returned. "The displacement is deliberate, they're looking to cause that," Bofin said. "The Islamic State stated a couple of years ago, in their weekly newspaper, that the killing of a Christian in a village will spark people to flee from surrounding villages and put pressure on the towns. They said it in black and white," he said. - $20 billion project - The renewed attacks come as TotalEnergies has announced that construction on its $20 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project near Palma could restart during the European summer. The project had been stalled since a deadly attack in March 2021 that resulted in over 800 victims, including several of the French energy giant's subcontractors, according to ACLED. It estimates that more than 6,100 people have been killed since the beginning of the insurrection. Mozambique's vast offshore natural gas reserves, discovered in 2010, could place the southern African country, where more than 70 percent of the population lives in poverty, among the top ten global producers, according to a 2024 report by the consulting group Deloitte. "The push down south was accompanied by a pretty intense propaganda campaign by Islamic State," Bofin said, adding that the militants had devoted an entire page to Mozambique in their weekly newspaper in the last weeks. "It's hard not to relate this to the situation regarding the LNG plant," he said. "It's certainly happening at a very, very interesting time, and they know how sensitive this time is as well." By Clément Varanges


Eyewitness News
3 days ago
- Eyewitness News
US raises bounty on Venezuela's Maduro to $50 mn
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