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BAMAKO: Gunmen have attacked a convoy of vehicles escorted by Mali’s army, killing 25 civilians mostly gold miners, a military spokesman said Sunday.
The attack took place Friday about 30 kilometers from Gao, the largest city in the country’s northeast where armed groups hostile to the ruling junta operate. It was the deadliest attack on civilians this year.
The assailants targeted a convoy of some 60 vehicles escorted by the army, military spokesman Col. Maj. Souleymane Dembele said. He said soldiers assisted the victims and transferred 13 wounded to the Gao hospital.
He said four of the attackers were wounded and declined to comment on any army casualties.
“My sister survived the attack, but she’s in a state of mental shock. She saw a lot of dead and wounded, a whole scene of horror. It was the first time she had seen dead people,” said a Gao resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity for his own safety.
Several groups operate in the area, including Daesh, the Al-Qaeda-linked JNIM, and others from the Azawad region hostile to Mali’s military regime.
Mali has been in a crisis for more than 10 years.
The military seized power in 2020, capitalizing on the unpopularity of the former democratically elected government, but the new rulers have struggled with deadly militant attacks.

MOSCOW: Russia said Sunday that its forces had captured the eastern Ukrainian village of Orikhovo-Vasylivka, near the strategic military hub of Chasiv Yar that Moscow is attempting to seize.

There is intensive fighting in the frontline town of Chasiv Yar, one of the last remaining urban areas blocking Russia from advancing further into the region, according to Russian military bloggers.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a daily briefing that “as a result of decisive attack actions, the South group of troops liberated the settlement of Orekhovo-Vasilevka in the Donetsk region,” using the Russian name for the village.
Orikhovo-Vasylivka is located around 10 kilometers north of Chasiv Yar and near the road to the Ukraine-held city of Sloviansk.
The latest advance comes as Russian troops are pushing further into the Donetsk region. They claimed the key mining town of Toretsk on Friday, while Ukraine denies Moscow troops are in full control there. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said he has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone about ending the war in Ukraine, the New York Post reported, the first known direct conversation between Putin and a US president since early 2022.
Trump, who has promised to end the war in Ukraine but not yet set out in public how he would do so, said last week that the war was a bloodbath and that his team had had “some very good talks.”
In an interview aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump told the New York Post that he had “better not say,” when asked how many times he and Putin had spoken.
“He (Putin) wants to see people stop dying,” Trump told the New York Post.  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the TASS state news agency that “many different communications are emerging.”
“These communications are conducted through different channels,” Peskov said when asked by TASS to comment directly on the New York Post report. “I personally may not know something, be unaware of something. Therefore, in this case, I can neither confirm nor deny it.”