Insurgents killed 25 civilians and injured 13 others in an ambush of a military-escorted convoy near Mali’s northeastern city of Gao on Friday, the army said late on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The army’s death toll differed from a local official’s account of the incident, which said that\u00a0up to 56 bodies were<\/u>\u00a0recorded at the hospital in Gao, and that there was also an unknown number of military casualties.<\/p>\n
The attackers struck near the village of Kobe, around 30 km (19 miles) from Gao in a region where groups linked to Islamic State and Al Qaeda have been active for over a decade, destabilising Mali and its neighbours Burkina Faso and Niger.<\/p>\n
The army said in a statement that at least 19 assailants were killed when soldiers retaliated and pushed them back. It did not mention military casualties.<\/p>\n
The insurgencies took root in Mali’s arid north following a Tuareg separatist rebellion in 2012. The militants have since spread to other countries in the impoverished central Sahel region south of the Sahara.<\/p>\n
Deadly attacks have become so frequent that the military organises near-daily escorts, a Gao resident said.<\/p>\n
The violence has killed thousands of people, displaced millions, and spurred a string of military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger between 2020 and 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Insurgents killed 25 civilians and injured 13 others in an ambush of a military-escorted convoy near Mali’s northeastern city of Gao on Friday, the army said late on Saturday. The army’s death toll differed from a local official’s account of the incident, which said that\u00a0up to 56 bodies were\u00a0recorded at the hospital in Gao, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1129,27],"tags":[1440,187,1454],"class_list":["post-15177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-west-africa","tag-gao","tag-mali","tag-tuareg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}