The military junta ruling the West African nation of Mali suffered one of its deadliest attacks in years this week, as extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda killed at least 50 members of its armed forces in an assault on the capital, Bamako.
But even as a private ceremony for the dead was being arranged for Thursday, the junta had yet to acknowledge the true toll of the assault, which struck two symbolically important military sites and brought an Islamist insurrection that has ravaged much of Mali to its doorstep. Tuesday’s attack sent a direct message to the country’s leader, Col. Assimi Goïta, as assailants stormed his former military base and set fire to his plane.
The Islamist group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, which has declared allegiance to Al Qaeda and is one of the deadliest extremist organizations in West Africa, claimed responsibility for the attack, the first in Mali’s capital since 2016.
The death toll of 50 or more is a preliminary, conservative figure based on interviews with members of Mali’s security forces, a surgeon at a Bamako hospital and a Western intelligence official with extensive knowledge of West Africa.
All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the attack publicly. The junta has not said how many people were killed.
The assault began at a school for military police in Faladié, a neighborhood halfway between downtown Bamako and the airport. Hundreds of trainees were still asleep when insurgents stormed the school compound around 5:30 a.m. The camp that hosts the school is also home to an elite special forces unit to which Colonel Goïta belongs.
About 50 of the trainees were killed, according to a police officer who was trapped at the camp during the attack, a Malian intelligence official based in Bamako and a surgeon at one of the capital’s main hospitals, who treated victims on Tuesday and visited the morgue on Wednesday.
Two graphic videos posted online, said to have been filmed at the camp, show rows of burned beds and at least five charred bodies. The New York Times was unable to confirm that the videos were authentic.
The surgeon and another military official said more than 100 people had been wounded in the assault on the school compound, 60 of whom were gravely injured.
Minutes after that attack began, assailants stormed the airport, where they set fire to the presidential plane used by Colonel Goïta, according to photos shared by the extremist group, as well as videos posted to social media whose authenticity was verified by The Times.
The images show that the militants infiltrated both the presidential or V.I.P. area of the airport, where they set fire to the presidential plane’s engine; and the civilian area, where there were at least five other aircraft. Those included two jets operated by the United Nations’ World Food Program and a commercial Sky Mali plane. The insurgents set fire to equipment inside another hangar.
A spokesman for the World Food Program said it was aware of footage showing an armed man shooting at one of its planes, but was unable to assess the damage because of restricted access to the tarmac.
The Islamist group said in a statement on Wednesday that it had destroyed six military aircraft, including a drone. The Times was not able to confirm that, but the police officer who had been at the camp during the attack said he had visited the airport on Wednesday, and that six aircraft had been damaged.
Satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies, provided to The Times, shows apparent fire damage to the airport’s V.I.P. hangar. The images, captured on Wednesday, also show damage to the rear of one U.N. plane, but no destroyed aircraft are visible.
The Malian intelligence official based in Bamako said that six insurgents had struck the military camp, with a second group of seven militants carrying out the airport assault.
Since Colonel Goïta and other officers seized power in 2020, they have maintained that only military leadership can restore order to Mali and win back territories lost to Islamist insurgents and other rebels over more than a decade. Turning their back on traditional allies like France and the United States, they have instead bought drones from Turkey and contracted with Russia’s Wagner group to send mercenaries to fight the rebels.
But so far, the military has struggled to contain the Islamists’ expansion, analysts say. In its statement on Wednesday, the extremist group said that it had killed “hundreds” of Malian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries, which The Times could not confirm.
The Islamist insurgency, which began in 2012, has been concentrated in northern and central Mali. But militants have been moving south toward the capital since 2022, carrying out dozens of attacks in neighboring regions.
“This attack significantly scratches the image that the Malian authorities had been painting since their takeover: one of a regime that has managed to restore security in the country,” said Ibrahim Maiga, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit focused on conflict prevention and resolution.
A video posted on social media after the Bamako assault shows Malian soldiers inspecting two bodies, accompanied by fair-skinned men speaking Russian. Wagner has a base at the airport that does not appear to have been targeted by the militants.
Early on Tuesday afternoon, Maj. Gen. Oumar Diarra, the military’s chief of general staff, visited Bamako’s airport and said on public television that all the attackers had been killed or arrested. But militants were still at large at the airport until 5 p.m., though the ones at the school compound had all been killed by late morning, the members of the Malian security forces said.
Malian state-run television aired footage showing more than a dozen blindfolded detainees, who the army identified as suspects in the recent attack. On the street outside the police camp, social media footage shows, a mob of youths set a man on fire. Witnesses told Reuters that the victim was a cigarette seller who was wearing a bullet belt, which may have lead the mob to believe he was an attacker.
Civilian deaths in Mali have skyrocketed as the insurgency has spread. A third of the country’s 23 million people are in need of aid, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian agency. Many have been displaced by Islamist violence or live under the rule of insurgents.
Mali has also been dealing with its worst floods since the 1960s, with at least 55 people killed and roughly 350,000 displaced or otherwise affected in recent weeks.
As of Thursday, the junta had not released a death toll from the insurgent assault, though the military’s general staff acknowledged on Tuesday that “some human lives were lost.” Two representatives for the military did not respond to requests for comment.
An official with the presidential office, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to publicly comment on the events, said Colonel Goïta had ordered that no death toll be made public. A private ceremony to honor the victims was scheduled for Thursday afternoon at a military police camp in Bamako, according to a telegram shared by military police officers and seen by The Times.
The assault, and the junta’s silence about it, has led to renewed calls from its opponents to restore civilian rule. A presidential election had been scheduled for March, but the junta declared a postponement and has not set a new date.
“No half-mast flag, no national days of mourning,” Ismaël Sacko, an opposition leader living in exile in France, said in a telephone interview. “This government is in denial.”
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