Mali

Russia’s Wagner mercenary force has attempted to hide efforts to obtain military equipment internationally for use in the war in Ukraine and is seeking to transit such supplies through Mali, the United States State Department said.

The security situation in the Sahel remains very worrying and the spiralling crisis in Sudan is an additional source of concern, a senior UN official warned the Security Council on Tuesday.

There are “strong indications” that more than 500 people were killed – the vast majority summarily executed – by Malian troops and foreign military personnel during a five-day operation in the village of Moura in central Mali in March 2022.

A number of political associations in Mali have joined forces to oppose the military government’s decision to hold a referendum on a new constitution on June 18. The referendum, announced on Friday, is a milestone on the country’s path towards elections promised for February after a coup three years earlier. The referendum had been previously scheduled for March 19 but was postponed.

Seven United Nations peacekeepers were wounded in central Mali on Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded under their convoy, the UN force in the West African country (MINUSMA) said.

The German government said on Wednesday it had decided to end its participation in the UN mission in Mali by next May over problems with the ruling junta. Chancellor Olaf Scholz‘s cabinet said Berlin would pull its 1,110 troops in the UN mission MINUSMA out of the West African country over the next year and pivot towards more humanitarian and development aid for the region.

Mali’s army on Monday said it had arrested “12 terrorists” in the troubled northeast, where militants affiliated with the Islamic State group have widened their control, but Tuareg ex-rebels claimed the fighters were theirs.

In a report presented to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Mali's ruling junta to "accelerate" the pace of the handover, in order to return power to elected civilians by early 2024 as promised.

Militants affiliated to Islamic State group have taken Tidermene in Mali, further isolating the regional capital, Menaka, in a region that has fallen almost entirely under their control, officials and witnesses told AFP on Wednesday.

The UN mission in Mali has been hampered politically and operationally by the ruling junta. The UN secretary-general is now drawing up a list of conditions the junta must meet if the mission is to stay on in the country.