Fighting between rival groups claims several lives in Mali
A series of violent clashes pitting a pro-government Tuareg group and the main Tuareg alliance against each other have claimed the lives of several people in Mali's restive north.
A regional security source said on Monday that the fighting erupted between the pro-Bamako Imghad Tuareg group and the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), a coalition of rebel groups, at Agnefis, located about 120 kilometers south of the strategic northern town of Kidal.
Fahad Ag Almahmoud, a top official from the pro-Bamako group said that at least 15 fighters were killed on both sides.
The two sides have presented conflicting versions of the latest clashes over the weekend in the country’s troubled north, a region where the government is trying to damp down separatist tensions.
The two rival groups have accused each other of initiating the latest fighting and breaching a two-month-old ceasefire.
On June 20, CMA signed a landmark deal, the Algiers Accord, with the government and its loyalist fighters to end years of unrest in the country.
The UN-sponsored peace deal is aimed at ending hostilities in Mali’s vast northern desert, where Tuareg rebels have launched several uprisings since the 1960s. The area has also been a main sanctuary for militants linked to al-Qaeda.
Despite the UN-backed deal in June, the Malian army and thousands of peacekeepers are struggling to impose order amid deep inter-communal tensions.
Mali plunged into violence after President Amadou Toumani Touré was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said the ouster of Touré was in response to the government’s failure to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north, where the rebels are fighting to gain autonomy.
An 11,000-strong UN peacekeeping force has been deployed in Mali since July 2013. France has also maintained 1,000 military forces in the northern desert.
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