Translated Text:
Mali 🇲🇱 | On Wednesday, May 27, the first day of the religious festival of Tabaski, the Malian Armed Forces and the Africa Corps 🇷🇺 conducted a nighttime aerial operation against Kidal, likely emptied of its inhabitants: the human toll among #FLA
| …the Tuareg-dominated rebel group Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), allied to Al Qaeda franchise JNIM… |
members remains unknown, but the historic Aliou neighborhood mosque (18.43169, 1.41057) was completely destroyed (📸 in thumbnail).
One week earlier, it was the Kidal governorate palace that had been destroyed.
➡ These strikes are part of a campaign of regular bombings in northern Mali 🇲🇱 to respond to the strategic defeat of late April against the ad hoc JNIM / FLA coalition.
In addition to the strikes carried out against the FLA in Kidal, several localities controlled by JNIM were targeted on May 25 by aerial strikes:
📍A first series of strikes targeted a terrorist hideout southeast of Kwala (Koulikoro region), destroying significant logistical resources and camping equipment.
📍A second series of strikes, northwest of Macina (Ségou region), destroyed another JNIM hideout.
In this confrontation, the FAMa decided to cross an additional threshold by allowing Africa Corps troops to use cluster bombs in northern Mali (📸 in thumbnail and 📽️ in comments), prohibited by international conventions (Mali is a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), Russia is not).
📍In the village of Tadjmart, 50 km south of Aguelhok, unexploded Russian-designed ShOAB-0.5 submunitions were authenticated by independent specialists, who compared them to similar fragments identified in Ukraine and Syria.
The presence of these submunitions coincides with an Africa Corps aerial strike on May 17, confirmed by a FAMa press release (see in comments).
⚠ They also suggest the likely use of a bomber (probably a Su-24), a new operational capability for the FAMa / Africa Corps, which had lost two Su-25s in crashes in 2022 and 2023.
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