Not less than 52 Soldiers and a civilian were reportedly killed in an attack on a military post in the northeast of Mali in what was described as one of the deadliest attacks in the country by Malian Minister of Communication, Yaya Sangare.
The attack took place in Indelimane which is in the Menka region, a border region close to Niger Republic. The attack involved at least three suicide bombers who detonated explosives inside the military outpost according to reports.
This deadly attack on the military was confirmed by Mali Spokesperson, Yaya Sangare through his Twitter account. “Ten survivors were found at the outpost,which suffered significant damage”, he wrote on Twitter.
According to Sangare, the situation had been brought under control as a search and the process of identifying the bodies are in progress.
The Malian government in its statement condemned the attack on the military as it had left so many persons dead and equally wounded in the process. The statement added that reinforcements have been dispatched to secure the area and hunt down the insurgents.
However, Excel Magazine confirmed from reliable sources that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant(ISIL) had claimed the responsibility of the deadly attack through pieces of information made available through Amaq,the media arm of the terrorist organization.
“Soldiers of the caliphate attacked a military base where elements of the apostate Malian army were stationed in the village of Indelimane”, the terrorist organization said via its media outlet, Amaq.
Paul Kelly, a consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Africa Programme described the terrorist group operating in the region as being highly mobile, adding that countering their threat was a huge challenge for security forces according to reports. He added that development and better public administration will assist in countering their threats of the terrorist organization.
“The answer cannot be security alone.Development and better public administration are key-but of course that is hard to provide when government personnel are at risk of targeted killing and it is not safe for development agencies to operate.”, he noted.
