A gendarme and a prison supervisor were killed on the night of Monday August 10 to Tuesday August 11 in two attacks on a prison and a gendarmerie in central Mali, an area theater of recent attacks attributed to jihadists, a judicial source said. .
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“ There was an attack by an armed group on the night of August 10 to 11 in Kimparana. The gendarmerie brigade and the prison were targeted. Results: two dead, a gendarme and a prison supervisor , ”Dramane Diarra, prosecutor at the Koutiala District Court, told AFP on Tuesday.
Kimparana, which legally depends on Koutiala, is a locality located in the circle of San, in the region of Ségou (center). Kimparana's gendarmerie brigade was " set on fire ", prosecutor Diarra said. " Five inmates escaped " during the attack on the prison, he added, without further details on this attack.
“ Calm has returned. The Malian soldiers (are) there en masse. We want them to make us more secure , ”a Kimparana notable told AFP on Tuesday. Five Malian soldiers were killed and five wounded on August 2 in two simultaneous attacks in the Niono circle, in the Ségou region, about 100 kilometers from the Mauritanian border, where the armed forces have suffered several serious setbacks since the beginning of the year.
Many attacks
This double attack took place between Goma-Coura and Diabaly. At least 24 Malian soldiers were killed in mid-June in an ambush attributed to jihadists in the town of Bouka Wéré, south-east of Diabaly.
On January 26, the Sokolo camp, also in central Mali, was the object of an attack that claimed the lives of 20 soldiers, claimed by the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM) , the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel, affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The center of Mali has been caught in a whirlwind of violence since the appearance in 2015 of a jihadist group led by the Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa, who has widely recruited within his community, and joined the GSIM from its creation in 2017. This violence has spread to neighboring countries, Niger and Burkina Faso.
The jihadist attacks are mixed with community clashes between the Fulani, mainly pastoralists, and the Bambara and Dogon ethnic groups, mainly practicing agriculture, who have created “ self-defense groups ”, relying in particular on traditional dozo hunters.
