Mali

The United Nations on Friday raised the alarm about a displacement crisis in the central Sahel where nearly four million people have been forced to flee their homes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The number is more than double that of six years ago, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said, before a wave of coups in a region bedevilled by instability and violence.

The Malian army and its Russian allies entered the strategic northern city of Kidal on Tuesday without resistance after Tuareg separatists announced a tactical withdrawal, five months after government forces were driven out.

[…] Thursday's assault on the Dioura military camp, which was claimed by jihadists, is one of the deadliest suffered by the Malian army since the beginning of the conflict that has ravaged the west African country for more than a decade.

Jihadists, separatists, military authorities and Russian Africa Corps: every belligerent in the Malian conflict has seized on generative artificial intelligence to boost its propaganda. A report by the Timbuktu Institute, titled “Algorithms at War: How Generative AI is Reshaping the Malian Conflict” and published on 9 September 2026, offers an unprecedented overview of these differentiated uses and warns of a major risk: the line between the real and the fabricated is growing blurrier by the day, even as terrorist groups’ recruitment capabilities keep expanding.

[…] In a statement published on Thursday, HRW accused Africa Corps of carrying out the killings in the presence of Malian soldiers at the beginning of last month.

Mali President Assimi Goïta on Thursday pardoned a French national who had been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Last year, Mali's military-led government accused Yann Vézilier, an official from the French embassy, of being involved in a plot to destabilise the West African country.

Open-source investigators have confirmed two drone strikes in northern Mali involving Shahed-136-type loitering munitions in the villages of Inafarak and Talahandak, near the Algerian border. … The Shahed-136 is a long-range one-way attack drone originally developed in Iran and now also manufactured in Russia.

Mara had been detained last August and charged with undermining the credibility of the state and spreading false information.

Summary killings of at least 19 Malian soldiers by members of armed groups in Tabrichat, a village in the Gao region, in northern Mali, must be investigated as war crimes, Amnesty International said after analyzing video footage of the incident which took place after the soldiers were ambushed on 18 July.

The Council today appointed Ms. Birgitte Nygaard Markussen as the new European Union Special Representative (EUSR) for the Sahel region. She will take up her duties on 1 September 2026 for an initial mandate of 12 months, until 31 August 2027. She succeeds João Cravinho, who has served as the EUSR for the Sahel since November 2024.