Gunfire rocked several districts of the West African country on Saturday, including the capital Bamako in Kati, where General Assimi Goïta, head of the junta, resides, witnesses and a security source told AFP.
Fighting was also heard in Gao, the main city in the north, and in Sévaré, in the center of this landlocked country. Mali has been gripped by a jihadist conflict for over a decade, and the army seized power following two coups in 2020 and 2021. Since 2012, the country has faced a security crisis linked to attacks carried out by terrorist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as by local criminal groups and separatists. According to multiple sources, the clashes pit the Azawad Liberation Front (ALF), active in the capital and in Kidal (north), against the terrorist group JNIM (Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin), which targeted the military base in Sévaré.
Several videos circulating on social media indicate that large areas of Kidal fell this morning under the control of the FLA, with Malian armed forces retreating. The cities of Kati, Gao, and Mopti are also targeted by these attacks, plunging the country into a major security crisis.
Resurgence of terrorist attacks
The military government, like its counterparts in neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso, severed ties with the former colonial power, France, and several Western countries in order to forge closer political and military ties with Russia. The Russian Wagner Group, which had been fighting alongside Malian forces against terrorists since 2021, announced the end of its mission in June 2025 and became the Africa Corps, an organization placed under the direct control of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The junta repressed the opposition and dissolved political parties. It had pledged to hand power back to civilians by March 2024, but in July 2025, it granted Goïta a five-year presidential term, renewable "as many times as necessary" and without elections. Since September, terrorists from the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate known by its Arabic acronym JNIM, have been attacking convoys of tanker trucks, paralyzing the capital, Bamako, at the height of the crisis in October. Despite several months of relative calm, Bamako residents faced a diesel shortage in March, as the fuel was being prioritized for the energy sector.
