Mali's largest jihadist coalition announced that it had captured a Russian mercenary from the Wagner group

Mali's largest jihadist coalition says it captured a Russian fighter from the Wagner group, the Kremlin-linked security firm allegedly hired by the country's military junta.

The claim was made in a statement sent to AFP on Sunday night by the Islam and Muslims Support Group (GSIM), although it did not provide evidence to support the claim.

“In the first week of April, (we) captured a soldier of Wagner's Russian forces in the Segou region of central Mali,” said the GSIM.

The group said that the Russians had participated in a massacre in Moura, in central Mali, last month, an event whose outlines were reported by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“These murderous forces participated with the Malian army in an airdrop operation at a market in the town of Moura, where they confronted several mujahideen before surrounding the town for five days and killing hundreds of innocent civilians,” he said.

This is the first time that GSIM, an alliance linked to Al-Qaeda and the largest jihadist network in the Sahel, has announced the capture of a Wagner operation.

In another operation, the GSIM statement said, “the mercenaries” carried out two parachute launches in Bandiagara, in central Mali.

The jihadist fighters seized weapons “from the mercenaries, who fled,” he said.

The United States, France and others say that Mali hired the Wagner group to help its armed forces, which are struggling to roll back a decade-long jihadist insurgency.

Mali's military-dominated government says Russians in the country are military instructors. It has also begun to receive combat helicopters and radars from Russia.

HRW says that Malian soldiers and white foreign soldiers, who did not speak French, executed 300 civilians in Moura between 27 and 31 March.

Mali says it “neutralized” 203 jihadists in Moura. United Nations says Malian authorities are preventing their investigators from accessing the area.

The Wagner group has also been accused of abuses in the Central African Republic.

Brutal conflict

Large areas of Mali are beyond government control due to the jihadist insurgency, which began in 2012 before spreading three years later to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

France, the former colonial power and traditional ally of Mali, intervened in 2013 and deployed a large force to support the Malian armed forces.

But in February, he decided to withdraw his troops after fighting with the military junta, especially because of its approach to the Kremlin.

The Sahel country is led by a military junta that took power in a coup d'état in August 2020.

The junta initially promised to restore civilian rule, but failed to honor a previous commitment to the West African bloc ECOWAS to organize elections in February this year, prompting regional sanctions.

Last week, a document from the army and officials said that a Russian citizen operating alongside Malian soldiers was killed by a roadside bomb in the center of the conflict-ravaged Sahel state.

A unit of the Malian army accompanied by a “Russian adviser” hit an improvised explosive device near the city of Hombori last Tuesday, according to a military memorandum seen by AFP.

It was the first confirmed Russian death in Mali.

On Sunday, the Malian army announced the deaths of six soldiers in simultaneous attacks on three military bases in central Mali.

The army statement added that one helicopter and two vehicles were also damaged.

According to a diplomatic document seen by AFP, almost all Malian military helicopters are currently being piloted by Russians with Malian co-pilots.

In general, the conflict in Mali is said to have resulted in thousands of military and civilian deaths and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

Jihadist violence has spread from the north of the country to the center and south, where the conflict is also fueled by ethnic friction and criminal gangs.

(With information from AFP)

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