Seven Malian soldiers were killed on Saturday in two separate attacks in Mali, a Sahelian country plagued by jihadist violence, the army said.
Five soldiers circulating in a vehicle were all killed in the early afternoon when it struck an artisanal mine near Ségou, about 200 km northeast of Bamako, the army said in a statement.
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The sweep of the area of the incident allowed the arrest of two suspects, immediately made available to the gendarmerie
", according to the press release.
At the end of the morning, two soldiers had perished in an ambush which also left three wounded near Mourdiah, about 200 km north of the capital, said the army, which specifies that the results of this ambush are provisional.
Despite the interventions of the French Barkhane force, the UN and a joint force from five Sahelian countries, Mali has been the scene since 2012 of jihadist violence, mixed with deadly inter-community conflicts,
From the north of the country, the violence has spread to the center of the country, especially since the appearance in 2015 of a jihadist group led by the Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa, but also in neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.
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