BAMAKO, Mali - Suspected Islamic militants attacked an airport and adjoining military camp in central Mali on Saturday, killing nine civilians and injuring 60 others, the regional government said.

Two local elected officials and a diplomatic source referred to the site – near the town of Sevare in the Mopti region – as a camp housing Russian troops.

Mali’s junta in 2022 began working with what it calls Russian military “instructors”.

Opponents say these are mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group.

“It is the Russian camp and their planes that have been targeted – the camp is near the airport”, a local elected official told AFP.

The attack lasted from 5.30am (1.30pm Singapore time) to around 8am, local and military officials said.

Four loud explosions were heard, followed by automatic weapons fire, witnesses told AFP.

Smoke was also seen near the airport.

The Malian military has since regained control of the area.

The local elected official said Senegalese soldiers from the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Mali, Minusma, were involved in the fighting.

Minusma’s camp covers four hectares of land next to the airport and the Malian army camp that houses the Russians.

A Minusma official declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Colonel-Major Abass Dembele, governor of the Mopti region, visited the site of what his office termed a “car bomb attack” targeting an air base in Sevare.

“He first visited the wounded admitted to the Somine Dolo hospital before going to the... airport area where the vehicle bomb packed with explosives exploded without reaching its target,” the statement said.

It said the governor had praised local residents who were “strongly mobilised” to donate blood to the injured.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Malian military official referred to the incident as a “terrorist” attack.

Another military official said it was a “complex attack that required a booby-trapped vehicle and guerilla techniques”.

Mali has been battling a security crisis since Islamic militant and separatist insurgencies broke out in the north of the country in 2012.

It has since August 2020 been ruled by a military junta, which broke a long-standing alliance with France and other Western partners in the fight against Islamic miilitancy and turned militarily and politically towards Russia. AFP