A Tuareg-led separatist group has begun withdrawing from the strategic northern Malian town of Anefis after days of heavy fighting with government forces and Russia’s Africa Corps, both the rebels and Mali’s army said Friday.
The Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), along with the al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), launched attacks over the weekend on military positions across Mali, including Anefis.
Anefis is seen as a key northern crossroads, linking Gao, the region’s largest city, to Kidal, which was seized by FLA fighters earlier this year.
FLA spokesperson Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane told Reuters that the group’s fighters decided Thursday to withdraw after a week of clashes with military convoys advancing from Gao.
Mali’s armed forces said Friday that joint operations with Russia’s Africa Corps were continuing across the country. The army said it had carried out 15 airstrikes in the previous 24 hours, destroying 12 combat vehicles and killing around 100 insurgents.
The army also said its operations had secured the route to Anefis.
Two security sources told Reuters that the FLA had attacked two military convoys heading toward Anefis this week as reinforcements. The second convoy reached the area Thursday night, according to both the army and Ramadane.
Heni Nsaibia, a senior West Africa analyst at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, said this week that the battle for Anefis would test whether insurgent groups could reverse the army’s most important territorial gains since late 2023.
Mali has been battling separatist and jihadist insurgencies for more than a decade, with the military government increasingly relying on Russian security support after cutting ties with former colonial power France.