In Bamako, on Tuesday 17 September, the trial for the purchase of the presidential plane, a symbol of the fight against corruption under the former regime, promised by Colonel Assimi Goïta’s junta, will open. In the end, it turned out to be the day that will mark the most significant jihadist attack against the Malian capital since the military coup in 2020. The very image of humiliation: that of a fighter from the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM), on the airport runway, silently setting fire to the engine of the said plane.
The attack began at around 5:30 in the morning, when the first rays of sunlight had not yet begun to shine on the waves of the Niger River. Gunshots and explosions echoed around the gendarmerie school, in the Faladié district, and about ten kilometres further south, near Modibo-Keïta airport. Very quickly, the GSIM published a first press release, in which it claimed to have carried out a “specific operation” against the“military airport and gendarmerie training base” that caused“huge human and material losses”as well as the “destruction of several fighter planes.”
In Faladié, the army quickly contained the attack. In a press release, the General Staff stated that“A group of terrorists tried to infiltrate the gendarmerie school”adding that sweeps are being carried out and that the situation is “under control”. At mid-morning, General Oumar Diarra, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, went to the scene and stated that “the terrorists who had infiltrated [ont] been neutralized »The alleged accomplices are arrested and shown on television.
“The real target of the terrorists: the airport”
The authorities have not anticipated any human cost, says a Malian official World that the attack on the gendarmerie school was a “sixty dead”. she would have It also caused numerous injuries. The building houses, in particular, the headquarters of the elite units of the gendarmerie, the rapid action intervention and surveillance group and the intervention platoon of the national gendarmerie.
“This attack on the gendarmerie school was a decoy and a means of neutralizing these special units to prevent them from intervening in the terrorists’ real objective: the airport.”“The attackers were still firing until late afternoon on Tuesday, and thick black smoke was rising from the asphalt. The attackers targeted the 101st airbase, which houses Malian air force aircraft and helicopters, as well as a detachment of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, who, like the soldiers present, have long been unable to repel the attack.
You have 45.29% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
