Gunmen attacked Mali’s capital Bamako and several other locations across the country on Saturday morning, with the army saying it was fighting terrorist groups that had hit army barracks in the capital and elsewhere.
Two loud explosions and sustained gunfire were heard shortly before 6am GMT near Mali’s main military base in Kati, outside Bamako. At the same time, unrest was reported in the town of Kidal, the city of Gao and the central town of Sevare, widening the sense that the attack was not confined to one place.
An journalist in Bamako reported heavy weaponry and automatic rifle fire near Modibo Keita International Airport, about 15km from the city centre, while a helicopter patrolled nearby neighbourhoods. The airport area is one of the capital’s most sensitive zones, and the sound of gunfire there suggested the assault had reached deep into the city.
Mali has been living with more than a decade of armed unrest, shaped by attacks from West Africa affiliates of al-Qaeda and ISIL and by a longer Tuareg-led rebellion in the north. After military coups in 2020 and 2021, Bamako severed ties with France and expelled French forces and United Nations peacekeeping missions, leaving the government to rely on a smaller circle of partners.
That shift has only deepened the stakes around Saturday’s violence. In July last year, military authorities granted coup leader Assimi Goita a five-year presidential mandate that can be renewed without an election, and a month before that Russia’s Wagner Group said it would complete its mission in Mali. Wagner has since become the Africa Corps under the direct control of the Russian Ministry of Defence, while Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger formed the Alliance of Sahel States in 2023 and created a joint military battalion to fight armed groups across the Sahel.
What happens next is whether the military can show it still has control over the capital and key garrisons after a morning that put Bamako, Kati, Gao, Kidal and Sevare on edge at the same time.