This video grab shows Malian security personnel detaining a man after Mali's army said a military training camp in the capital Bamako had been attacked, on Sept. 17.The Associated Press
An Islamist militia with close links to al-Qaeda has launched an audacious assault on Mali’s capital, attacking a military police academy and the airport base of the Russian troops who prop up the country’s military regime.
Videos posted by the insurgents showed several armed jihadists roaming through sections of Bamako’s main international airport on Tuesday morning, setting fire to an official state aircraft, a Boeing 737, and firing shots inside the airport’s presidential terminal.
They also attacked a dormitory at a paramilitary training academy where students were sleeping. Dozens of people were reportedly killed and injured in the fighting. Gunfire and explosions were heard in the city for hours, while a plume of black smoke was visible above the airport.
The co-ordinated dawn attack on two key security targets is the latest sign of the Islamist insurgency expanding in southern Mali and moving closer to the capital, far beyond the traditional rebel strongholds in northern Mali.
Independent experts said the attack was symbolically important, showing that Mali’s military government was unable to defend strategic targets and the insurgents were capable of co-ordinating large-scale attacks on the capital. “This is a watershed event,” regional analyst Andrew Lebovich said in a social-media post, citing the “remarkable failure” to protect the international airport.
The airport is one of the main bases for the Russian troops who were recruited by the military regime after it seized power in a coup in 2021. An estimated 1,000 Russian soldiers are now in the country, accompanying Mali’s army in military operations against Islamist militants and Tuareg separatist rebels. The regime ordered the ejection of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers and French troops after the Russians arrived.
An Islamist group affiliated with al-Qaeda, known as JNIM, claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack. It said it inflicted heavy casualties and major damage to aircraft and equipment at the airport and police academy.
The government said it had the situation under control, but it acknowledged that “sensitive points” in the capital had fallen under attack. It ordered the temporary closing of the airport, and flights were diverted away from Bamako for most of the day, although the restrictions were later lifted.
Adam Sandor, a Canadian scholar who studies security issues in the Sahel region, said the attack showed that JNIM is continuing to encircle Bamako, with the airport a prime target. The attack is a “massive hit” to the military government’s international reputation, he said in a social-media post. “This is definitive proof of what several analysts of Mali’s security politics have warned for months now,” he said.
All three of the military regimes in Sahel countries – Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso – recruited hundreds of Russian soldiers after taking power by toppling civilian governments in coups. But violence has escalated in each of the countries since the coups and the Russian arrival.
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The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, an analysis unit in the U.S. Defence Department, reported that 11,200 people have been killed as a result of violent extremism in the Sahel region this year – a threefold increase since 2021. About half of Mali’s territory has fallen outside the government’s control, it said.
Tuesday’s attack is the second major setback for the Malian and Russian troops in recent weeks. Separatist rebels killed dozens of Russian soldiers last month in an ambush in northern Mali, the bloodiest loss suffered by the Russians since they arrived in the country.
The attack on the international airport was the first such incident in the capital since 2015, when terrorists stormed a hotel and killed 20 people. But insurgents attacked a major military base near Bamako in July, 2022, killing at least six people. The number of violent clashes in southern and central Mali has been escalating for years.
Mali’s authorities have tried to crush the rebellion with an increasingly repressive response, including several massacres in villages where rebels were suspected to be operating. They have also cracked down on political opponents and independent media, banning several outlets.
Despite the deteriorating situation and the closing of some Western embassies in the country, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said last month that Canada will maintain its embassies and aid programs in Mali and neighbouring Burkina Faso.
The government has spent more than $1.8-billion on aid to the Sahel region in the past six years. “After Haiti, per capita, this is the region we’re most investing in in the world,” Ms. Joly told The Globe and Mail last month.