Mali faced a major test of its security posture after an alliance of al-Qaida-linked militants and separatists carried out what the Associated Press described as the largest coordinated attack in more than a decade, with near-simultaneous strikes across the country on Saturday. The attack hit prominent targets, including the airport in Bamako, and authorities had not released an official death toll by Monday, according to the report.
The Associated Press said the strikes extended beyond the capital area. They reached the garrison town of Kati and northern and central cities including Kidal and Sevare, underscoring that the assault was not confined to one front. The report said the attack marked a challenge for Russia, which has partnered with Mali’s military-led government after Mali distanced itself from former allies such as France.
One of the outcomes described by the separatists came from the Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, which said the key northern city of Kidal was now in its hands. Kidal has been central to Mali’s conflict since Tuareg separatists and jihadi groups seized it in 2012, when they captured much of northern Mali and helped set off a broader breakdown in government control that later prompted a French military intervention, the report said.
The AP report also placed the weekend violence in the wider pattern of extremist activity across the Sahel. It cited a Global Terrorism Index by the Institute for Economics and Peace, saying the region accounts for 51% of global deaths caused by violent extremism, up from 1% almost two decades ago, and that deaths from extremist attacks have increased nearly tenfold since 2019. For more than a decade, Mali has faced militants affiliated with al-Qaida-linked groups such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, as well as Islamic State group affiliates, alongside a separatist rebellion in the north.
The report described how JNIM and the FLA have overlapped despite ideological differences. In Mali’s north, Tuareg-led separatist groups have sought an independent state called Azawad, and in 2024 they merged into the FLA, which fought alongside JNIM in the weekend attack. A senior fellow at a Moroccan think tank, Rida Lyammouri of the Policy Center for the New South, said JNIM and the FLA share an interest in pushing the Malian army out of northern and central Mali, as well as Russian soldiers allied with Mali’s security forces.
Analysts also tied parts of the attack’s buildup to pressure tactics targeting Bamako. The AP report said JNIM had attacked fuel tankers on the roads from neighboring Senegal and Ivory Coast in recent months, plunging Bamako into crisis and contributing to fuel shortages and long lines around gas stations. It said the Malian army escorted some fuel convoys into the capital, bringing only temporary and partial relief, and described a fragile truce reached in late March that collapsed, after which attacks on supply routes resumed before the weekend attacks.
The report portrayed the current security equation as shaped by Mali’s shift toward Russia. It said Mali is ruled by a military government that took power by force in recent years, accusing former democratically elected governments of corruption and of being backed by France. It said the government turned to Russia as a security partner after France and a United Nations peacekeeping mission left, while also creating its own security partnership, the Alliance of Sahel States, and that Mali’s top security partner is now Africa Corps, a Russian military unit reporting to the defense ministry in Moscow with an estimated strength of around 2,000 troops in Mali.
On Monday, the AP report said Russia’s Africa Corps posted on the messaging channel Telegram that its fighters withdrew from Kidal two days after the FLA announced it had taken the city. The report added that the FLA said it had negotiated a deal allowing Russian and Malian forces to pull out of Kidal, departing under rebel escort from the former U.N. peacekeeping base. The sequence highlighted how quickly control and deployments could change in one of the conflict’s historically pivotal cities.