Malian forces have repelled another attack near San, the army said. The San Mali attack comes as jihadist groups keep up pressure on military positions across central Mali.
Fighting broke out before dawn on Sunday in San, a garrison town in the Ségou region. Residents told the French broadcaster RFI that explosions and gunfire began around 5am. The clashes lasted almost two hours before the shooting stopped.
Lieutenant Colonel El Oumrani commands the 23rd Regiment based in San. He said the San Mali attack had been successfully repelled. The camp, he added, remained under the control of the Malian Armed Forces, known locally as FAMa. Soldiers had briefly pulled back during the fighting, he acknowledged, but the base had not fallen.
That account is disputed. In the hours after the San Mali attack, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, the al-Qaeda affiliate known as JNIM, claimed its fighters had seized the barracks outright. The group released footage it said showed militants moving freely around the compound. FAMa rejected the claim. The footage, the army said, was filmed during a brief incursion before the attackers withdrew.
Security sources cited by AFP gave a more sobering account of the toll. At least ten soldiers were killed, the sources said, and the camp was temporarily occupied before troops mounted a vigorous response. The attackers arrived on motorcycles and on foot, and some were disguised in military uniforms. They reportedly used drones, heavy machine guns and armoured vehicles to breach the perimeter.
No independent journalists have reached San to verify either side’s account. The competing claims reflect a pattern that has become familiar in Mali’s long running conflict. The San Mali attack also underscores how insurgent operations are expanding beyond their traditional areas of activity. Government forces have struggled to contain jihadist and separatist groups since 2012. San sits well south of the traditional insurgent strongholds, and that distance shows how far the militants’ reach now extends.
This San Mali attack follows a string of setbacks for Mali’s military government under General Assimi Goïta. On 18 July, at least fifty soldiers were killed when a convoy came under attack in the north. JNIM and the Azawad Liberation Front claimed that assault jointly. In April, coordinated strikes hit several towns at once, killed the country’s defence minister and briefly put the strategic town of Kidal in rebel hands.
San’s location makes it a logical target for an attack of this kind, according to analysts who track the Sahel. The town sits along a transit corridor linking central and southern Mali. Any sustained JNIM presence there would threaten supply lines that FAMa depends on to reinforce remote outposts. That strategic weight helps explain why the army moved quickly to insist the base had not fallen after the San Mali attack.
For residents, the mood on the ground was calmer than the competing statements suggested after the San Mali attack. One resident, who declined to be named for safety reasons, said calm had returned to San by mid morning. Markets had reopened, the resident added, though soldiers remained visible around the camp.
Russian military contractors operating alongside FAMa, organised under the banner Africa Corps, echoed the army’s version of events. They said the attackers had been repelled with heavy losses. Their involvement began under the earlier Wagner Group deployment. It has become a fixture of Mali’s counter-insurgency effort since the military government cut ties with French forces.
It remains unclear whether this San Mali attack was an isolated incident or part of a wider southward push. What is already evident, security analysts say, is that neither superior firepower nor foreign military support has stopped JNIM from probing deeper into Mali’s centre. Each new San Mali attack, or elsewhere in the region, adds pressure on a military government that took power promising to restore security.
