Nine troops were killed in Mali’s troubled central region early Wednesday when their camp came under attack from jihadists, security sources said.
Their position at Boni, located between Douentza and Hombori in the Mopti region, was attacked by “heavily armed individuals in armoured vehicles,” one source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The source said the camp had been seriously damaged and the assailants had made off with lots of equipment.
The attack is the latest in a brutal conflict that has been raging in Mali since 2012, when militants overtook a rebellion by mostly ethnic Tuareg separatists in the north.
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The conflict, which has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, then spread to central Mali, an ethnic powderkeg, and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.