Bamako (AFP) - Jihadists and their separatist Tuareg allies hit Mali with fresh coordinated attacks Saturday, striking multiple towns and a prison just months after hobbling the country’s military junta with a similar wave of assaults.

The fighting comes after the Al-Qaeda-linked JNIM jihadists and Tuareg FLA separatists in late April captured the strategic northern town of Kidal and killed Mali’s defence minister.

On Saturday, they carried out their latest offensive in the northern towns of Gao, Anefis and Aguelhok, plus the central town of Sevare and at a prison in Kenieroba near the west African nation’s capital.

Since coups in 2020 and 2021, Mali has been led by the military. Its junta leaders had promised to restore calm in the vast desert nation that has been grappling with a security crisis since 2012, but so far have mostly failed to deliver.

The Mali military, backed by Africa Corps, the Moscow-controlled paramilitary group, has intensified operations following the large-scale April 25-26 attacks.

Approximately a year ago, the Tuareg FLA (Azawad Liberation Front) teamed up with JNIM (the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims) in an effort to combat their joint nemesis, the country’s military leaders.

All these operations “contribute to weakening and isolating the regime”, Bakary Sambe, director of the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute, told AFP, predicting that they “are intermediate steps pending a more spectacular assault”.

- Calm in fighting -

By late afternoon, much of the fighting had died down.

The Malian army confirmed the rebel assaults on the four towns and Kenieroba on Facebook Saturday morning, asserting that “these attacks were vigorously repelled” and that “the situation is completely under control.”

A regional elected official, however, said that rebels now controlled the town of Anefis, with Russians “entrenched in camp there” and “many” Malian military personnel taken prisoner.

FLA spokesman Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane had told AFP earlier in the day that “several positions” had fallen at Anefis.

The towns of Anefis and Aguelhok are the last remaining locations where Mali’s army maintains a presence in the northern Kidal region, following the April attacks.

Fighting had stopped in the northern town of Gao, a strategic location for controlling the region, by late afternoon, local sources said.

Residents had told AFP earlier in the day that gunfire and “loud blasts” were heard near an army camp there.

The Malian army acknowledged one fatality in Gao and claimed to have “neutralized” a total of “20 terrorists” in the central town of Sevare.

The death toll could be severely understated, however, given that the military does not generally release information on losses.

Sevare, home to a large army base and an airport, was also calm by late afternoon according to local sources.

The halt in fighting followed “explosions that rang out… around 5:00 am”, according to a security source.

The Kenieroba prison complex, where jihadists and others are held, also came under attack some 70 kilometres (40 miles) southwest of Bamako.

“We are under our beds, the gunfire continues,” one prisoner told AFP, before communications seemed to be cut off.

The Kenieroba Central Detention Center is the largest modern penal facility in Mali, with a more than 2,500-prisoner capacity.

“For now, the (rebels’) objective appears to be seizing and securing the north before moving further south”, an associate at the Strategic Research Institute of the International Academy for the Fight Against Terrorism told AFP.

- Long-term troubles -

Mali has been grappling with a security crisis since 2012 by jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group and community-based criminal groups and separatists.

In their joint assault in April, the Tuareg rebels and jihadists took Kidal, which had been seized in November 2023 by the Malian army and allied fighters from the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary force now replaced by Africa Corps.

Mali junta leader General Assimi Goita has aligned the country with Russia, turning its back on its former colonial power France.

The rebels plus the Malian army and its Russian allies have committed “grave abuses” against civilians since the April attacks, Human Rights Watch said in a report last month.

The April attacks were reminiscent of a 2012 crisis when Tuareg rebels allied with jihadists captured strategic hubs in the country’s vast, remote north.

A historically nomadic people, Tuaregs, who are spread across Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, have waged an armed struggle for decades against marginalisation, with action centred in particular around Kidal.

Meanwhile, JNIM had since September been waging a series of attacks on fuel tanker convoys heading for Mali’s capital, which reached its peak last October.

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