Timbuktu: Mali’s northern Tuareg rebels said they had killed and injured dozens of soldiers and Wagner mercenaries in two days of fighting near the Algerian border, after the army said it had lost two soldiers but killed some 20 rebels.
The rebel movement, the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD), said in a statement on Saturday that it had seized armored vehicles, trucks and tankers in the fighting at the border town of Tinzaouaten on Thursday and Friday. The rebel group also said it damaged a helicopter, which crashed in the town of Kidal, hundreds of kilometers away.
The Malian army said in statements that two soldiers had been killed and 10 injured. One of its helicopters had crashed in Kidal on Friday while on a routine mission but no one was killed, it said. Several Russian military bloggers reported on Sunday that at least 20 from the Wagner group were killed in an ambush near the Algerian border. “Employees of the Wagner PMC (Group), who were moving in a convoy with government troops, were killed in Mali…Some were captured,” said a prominent Russian military blogger Semyon Pegov, who uses the name War Gonzo. –The Daily Mail-CGTN news exchange item
