Five persons were slain by unidentified assailants in a late-Monday attack on a civil defence post close to Bamako, the capital of Mali, according to a security ministry statement.
The incident, which happened some 80 kilometres from Bamako in a region of southwest Mali that has been mostly unscathed by the insurgency wreaking havoc on central and northern regions, did not identify its assailants.
Without going into any detail, it claimed that the attack claimed the lives of two members of the civil defense force and three civilians.
The Mali insurgency is an ongoing armed conflict that started in January 2012 between the northern and southern parts of Mali in Africa. On January 16, 2012, several insurgent groups began fighting a campaign against the Malian government for independence or greater autonomy for northern Mali, which they called Azawad.
The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), an organisation fighting to make this area of Mali an independent homeland for the Tuareg people, had taken control of the region by April 2012.
Meanwhile, a Malian court on Friday found 46 Ivorian soldiers guilty of undermining state security and handed them 20 years each in prison.
The Appeals Court of Bamako reached its verdict after two days of a marathon trial that began on Thursday, December 29.
The Ivorian soldiers were held on July 10, 2022, after they arrived at the Bamako Airport at the height of a row between Mali’s military junta and Western countries over the West African nation’s ties with Russia.