Africa Corps, a paramilitary group controlled by \u200bRussia’s Defence Ministry, confirmed on Monday that its forces \u200chad withdrawn from the northern town of Kidal in Mali after\u00a0fierce fighting\u00a0there.<\/p>\n
The Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, a Tuareg-dominated rebel \u200bgroup, carried out\u00a0simultaneous attacks across the country at the \u200bweekend, including on Kidal, in coordination with West \u2060Africa’s al Qaeda affiliate.<\/p>\n
Africa Corps, which has been supporting \u200bthe military-led central government, said in a statement that the \u200bdecision to withdraw from Kidal had been taken in conjunction with the Malian leadership.<\/p>\n
“In accordance with a joint decision by the leadership \u200bof the Republic of Mali, units of the African \u200bCorps that were stationed and engaged in combat in the town of \u200cKidal \u2060have withdrawn from the area alongside Malian Army personnel,” the statement, posted on Telegram, said.<\/p>\n
“Wounded servicemen and heavy equipment were evacuated first. Personnel continue to carry out their assigned \u200bcombat mission. \u200bThe situation in \u2060the Republic of Mali remains difficult.”<\/p>\n
Russian war bloggers played down the withdrawal, saying the \u200bAfrica Corps could always return to Kidal \u200bif necessary. \u2060Yuri Podolyak, a blogger with over 2.7 million followers, said withdrawing was the only option and that there was now \u2060a \u200bpossibility to do a deal with \u200bthe Tuaregs to allow the Malian Army and Africa Corps to focus \u200bon fighting Islamist radicals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Africa Corps, a paramilitary group controlled by \u200bRussia’s Defence Ministry, confirmed on Monday that its forces \u200chad withdrawn from the northern town of Kidal in Mali after\u00a0fierce fighting\u00a0there. The Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, a Tuareg-dominated rebel \u200bgroup, carried out\u00a0simultaneous attacks across the country at the \u200bweekend, including on Kidal, in coordination with West \u2060Africa’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"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","show_comment_section":"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":[2362,33,1129,27],"tags":[4364,3547,1713,187,373],"class_list":["post-20628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-security","category-west-africa","tag-africa-corps","tag-azawad-liberation-front","tag-kidal","tag-mali","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20628","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=20628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20629,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20628\/revisions\/20629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}