The sun was just rising over the Niger River on Tuesday, September 17, at around 5:30 a.m., when gunfire and detonations rang out in Bamako, around the gendarmerie school, in the Faladié district, and around Modibo-Keïta airport, about ten kilometers further south, where a Malian air force base is located.
These attacks were claimed by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM, linked to Al-Qaeda). In its press release, released shortly after 11 a.m., the jihadist organization claims to have carried out a “specific operation” against “ the military airport and a gendarmerie training base » which led to “enormous human and material losses” as well as “ the destruction of several combat aircraft.
For its part, the General Staff of the Armed Forces declared that:“A group of terrorists tried to infiltrate the Faladié gendarmerie school”, adding that sweeps were being carried out and that the situation was “under control”. Suspects have also been arrested.
Although the authorities have not yet provided any human toll, an officer assured the World that the attack on the gendarmerie school had made “several deaths”. According to another Malian Source, ” many injured ” were sent to the Mali Hospital, one of the main hospitals in the capital.
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The gendarmerie school houses the headquarters of the elite gendarmerie units, the Rapid Action Group for Surveillance and Intervention (Garsi) and the National Gendarmerie Intervention Platoon (PIGN). As for Bamako airport, it was quickly closed. Airbase 101, which hosts planes and helicopters from the Malian Air Force, as well as a detachment of Russian mercenaries from Wagner, was targeted by the attackers. Adjacent to the civilian airport, it is located on the south side of the tarmac, less than a kilometer from the commercial terminals. On videos received in the morning by The Worldbullet holes can be seen on windows in a departure hall and the duty-free area of the airport.
Affront
The last major jihadist attack in the heart of the Malian capital dates back to March 21, 2016, and the attack on the Nord-Sud hotel, headquarters of the Malian army training mission by the European Union (EU), which resulted in the death of an assailant.
On July 22, 2022, a complex car bomb attack, claimed by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM), targeted the Kati military camp, about fifteen kilometers north of Bamako, a garrison town and stronghold of the junta led by Colonel Assimi Goïta. An affront to the military in power, who have made the reconquest of national sovereignty the alpha and omega of their policy.
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Coincidence or not, the attack comes five days before Independence Day, September 22. But also on the opening day of the trial of the purchase of the presidential plane and military equipment by the regime of Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK), overthrown on August 18, 2020 by the junta of Colonel Goïta, in which several civilian and military figures are accused of corruption. This was to be held at the court of appeal, next to the gendarmerie school where some of the accused are being held, such as General Moustapha Drabo and Colonel Major Nouhoum Dabitao. Among the other defendants are several close associates and former ministers of IBK.
