Separatist rebels in northern Mali said Thursday that they killed dozens of fighters from the Russian mercenary group Wagner and government troops near the Algerian border at the end of July.
The Tuareg-led separatists said Thursday they killed 84 Wagner fighters and 47 Malian soldiers in three days of intense fighting that began on July 25 at a military camp at Tinzaouaten.
About 30 other troops or fighters, either “dead or seriously injured,” were airlifted to Kidal, a key northern city, the Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad (CSP-DPA) alliance said.
It said there were also some charred bodies inside armored vehicles and transport trucks.
Azawad is the generic name for all Tuareg Berber areas, particularly in the northern half of Mali and northern and western Niger. The separatists are fighting for an independent homeland.
The separatist alliance said it had taken seven Wagner and Malian government fighters hostage and that it had lost nine men in the fighting.
The al-Qaida-linked group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) also claimed its fighters had attacked a Malian army convoy and allies from Wagner south of Tinzaouaten.
AFP could not corroborate the figures from independent sources. The army and the Wagner group had admitted heavy losses in the region.
Analysts said these were the heaviest losses suffered so far by Wagner in Africa.
The group spearheaded some of the Kremlin’s longest and bloodiest military campaigns in Ukraine until a short-lived rebellion against the Russian government. It is now active in Africa.
The CSP-DPA said it had seized five armored vehicles, five pickups and several arms.
The Wagner Group said the rebels gained the upper hand thanks to a sandstorm, which analysts say would have negated the air support superiority of the Malian forces and their allies.
The separatists on Thursday claimed more than 50 civilians of Nigerien, Sudanese and Chadian origin had been killed in revenge drone attacks by neighboring Burkina Faso.
The separatists warned Burkina Faso against getting involved “in fighting that does not concern it.”
The Malian army on Tuesday said it, along with Burkina Faso, had staged air attacks in the Tinzaouaten region following the fighting.
Mali has admitted it suffered a “large number” of deaths during fighting in the north last week.
The West African nation’s military leaders who seized power in a 2020 coup have made it a priority to retake all of the country from separatists and jihadi forces linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State terror group.
Under Colonel Assimi Goita, the junta broke off its traditional alliance with former colonial ruler France and has turned toward Russia.
After an eight-year lull, hostilities between Mali and the separatists resumed in August 2023. The army’s offensive culminated in the storming of the northern pro-independence stronghold of Kidal in November.
Its capture was widely hailed across Mali as a symbolic success.
But the rebels refused to lay down their arms. Instead, they scattered across the mountainous desert region, with Malian forces in pursuit.
Near Tinzaouaten, the two sides engaged in three days of intense fighting at the end of July on a scale not seen for months.
