Coordinated attacks strike five locations in Mali as fighting spreads

Armed groups carried out near-simultaneous attacks at five points in Mali on Saturday, marking another surge in violence more than two months after gunmen hit Bamako and other parts of the country.

Malian military and security sources said the incidents happened in areas that included a northern town where state forces and Russian fighters are stationed, along with a town south of the capital. The army named Aguelhok, Anefis, Gao, Sevare and Kenieroba as the places that were targeted.

AFP, quoting residents and security sources, reported that the prison in Kenieroba was also attacked. The agency said fighting at the different sites began at about 5am local time, or 05:00 GMT.

A Tuareg-led armed movement said it was responsible for an early attack on Anefis, in the northeastern Kidal region. Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesperson for the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), told Reuters that the group's fighters had attacked the town.

Government troops and Russian personnel were deployed to Anefis after attacks on April 25 and 26, when the FLA and a regional al-Qaeda affiliate captured Kidal town. Ramadane also told AFP that "several positions have fallen, but fighting is still underway inside the city" of Anefis.

An Anefis resident reached by AFP said "armed groups are in the town, but the army is still putting up resistance. The camp [there] has not yet fallen". Following the April assaults, Anefis and Aguelhok are the only remaining places in the Kidal region where Mali's army still has a presence.

In Gao, a local official told Reuters that gunfire and rockets had been directed at a military camp since before dawn, although it was not immediately known which fighters were behind that attack. In Sevare, a security source told AFP that "explosions rang out ... around 5am, though their origin is not yet known. Shortly thereafter, several aircraft were spotted flying over the area".

A prisoner inside the main prison complex in Kenieroba told AFP that the facility was under attack as well. The latest wave of assaults added to the pressure facing Mali's military-led government in the landlocked Sahel country, where rebels carried out major attacks in April by striking Bamako airport, killing the defence minister and taking a series of army bases in the north.