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Mali’s army spokesperson has said Russian soldiers have deployed to the northern city of Timbuktu to train Malian forces at a base vacated by French troops last month amid persistent insecurity in a country where large swaths of territory are out of the government’s control. The Malian government said late last year that “Russian trainers” had arrived in the country, but Bamako and Moscow have so far provided few details on the deployment, including on how many soldiers are involved or the Russian troops’ precise mission. On December 23, a group of Western countries led by former colonial power France,...

Military officers in Mali detained the president, prime minister and defence minister of the interim government on Monday, deepening political chaos just months after a military coup ousted the previous president, multiple sources told Reuters. President Bah Ndaw, Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and defence minister Souleymane Doucoure were all taken to a military base in Kati outside the capital Bamako, hours after two members of the military lost their positions in a government reshuffle, the diplomatic and government sources said. Their detentions followed the military ouster in August of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. The development could exacerbate instability in the...

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse have been detained by mutinying soldiers in the capital during an apparent coup attempt. The development on Tuesday came hours after soldiers took up arms and staged a mutiny at a key base in Kati, a town close to Bamako. It followed a weeks-long political crisis that has seen opposition protesters taking to the streets to demand the departure of Keita, accusing him of allowing the country's economy to collapse and mishandling a worsening security situation. Mali's years-long conflict, in which ideologically-motivated armed groups have stoked ethnic tensions while jockeying...

Gunmen who raided a Malian hotel shouted "Allahu akbar" as they sprayed bullets on tables of people who were gathered for breakfast, a witness said. The attackers did not say a word to anyone as they opened fire Friday morning, employee Tamba Couye said. They shot at "anything that moved" as terrified patrons dashed for cover all over the hotel, he said. By the time Malian and U.N. security forces rushed in and ended the siege hours later, bodies were scattered across the floors of the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako. At least 22 people were killed in the attack,...

Anita Datar, 41, perished in the Mali hotel siege on Friday. She's the only American known to have died in the attack. A former Peace Corp worker in Senegal, Datar was in Mali on an international development project. The casualty hit home for Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner and senator from New York for eight years. "I knew Anita as the loving mother of a wonderful seven-year old boy and the former partner of David Garten, one of my senior policy advisors in the Senate," Clinton said in a statement ... Datar is among the at least 19 victims of...

Radison Blu hotel under attack by jihadists armed with AK-47s and hand grenades in Malian capital of Bamako Up to 10 gunmen have taken dozens of hostages inside the Radisson hotel while 80 people have escaped unharmed Gunmen spoke in English and tested hostages' knowledge of the Koran before allowing Muslim hostages to leave Pentagon confirms that all 22 American nationals were rescued and unhurt following the hotel crisis US Special Forces led elite operation to clear the building one floor at a time amid deadly hostage crisis At least 27 people have been killed including a Belgian diplomat and...

At least 27 people were reported dead on Friday after Malian commandos stormed a luxury hotel in the capital Bamako with at least 170 people inside, many of them foreigners, that had been seized by Islamist gunmen. The former French colony has been battling Islamist rebels for several years, and the jihadist group Al Mourabitoun, allied to al Qaeda and based in the deserts of northern Mali, claimed responsibility for the attack in a tweet. By late afternoon, ministerial adviser Amadou Sangho told the French television station BFMTV that no more hostages were being held. But a U.N. official said...

Armed jihadists have killed at least three people in a deadly shooting rampage after taking 170 hostages at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali. Automatic weapons fire was heard on the seventh floor of the 190-room hotel, where it was thought as many as 10 militants roamed through the building, looking for guests and members of staff. 80 hostages have since been freed as special forces entered the building. Six American nationals have been rescued alive but several other American remain inside with the other 125 guests and 13 employees trapped inside the besieged hotel. The Pentagon revealed that...

Muslim terrorists opened fire on an upscale hotel on Friday in the city of Bamako, the capital of the western African state of Mali. The jihadists used automatic weapons according to security sources, and apparently have taken people hostage in the Radisson Blu Hotel. Some reports indicate that at least three people have died in the attack. The luxury hotel, which has 190 rooms, is a popular site for Western officials according to French-language media. According to the French RFI radio, the attack was launched by three assailants who entered the hotel with diplomatic cars. Security forces have set up...

Four people, including French and Belgian nationals, have been shot dead in a restaurant on a busy street in the Malian capital Bamak. Witnesses said they saw four people running away and shouting "God is Great" in Arabic ("Allahu Akbar") as they fired machine guns and throw a grenade at La Terrace in Bamako's lively Hippodrome district following the attack shortly after midnight. "This is a terrorist attack, although we're waiting for clarification. Provisionally, there are four dead - one French national, a Belgian and two Malians," a policeman told AFP, adding that the dead included a police officer passing...

France’s campaign in Mali exposes Europe’s unpreparedness for 21st-century war. WITH WELL-ARMED radical Islamist insurgents closing in last winter on Mali’s capital, Bamako, French President François Hollande suddenly decided to defend Western civilization. Plunging in the polls as the most unpopular French president since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958, he just might have had ulterior motives; diverting hostile public opinion at home with a military escapade abroad is a tried and true tactic for floundering chiefs of state. Be that as it may, French troops, mainly Foreign Legion, began deploying to Mali in Operation Serval on January 11....

Executive Summary:On March 21, 2012, a group of Army mutineers appeared on Mali's national television station to declare that they had ended President Amadou Toumani Toure's regime and put in place the “National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of State” (CNRDR). In the days following the coup, the leader of the CNRDR – Captain Amadou Sanago, a virtually unknown junior officer, has shown an inability to command discipline from his troops – who have looted the capital. The disappearance of President Toure and the factional infighting of the Army have made the country defenseless against AQIM’s...

BAMAKO, Mali — Moctar Touré was strapped to a chair, blindfolded, his right hand bound tight to the armrest with a rubber tube. A doctor came and administered a shot. Then Mr. Touré’s own brother wielded a knife, the kind used to slaughter sheep, and methodically carried out the sentence. “I myself cut off my brother’s hand,” said Aliou Touré, a police chief in the Islamist-held north of this divided nation. “We had no choice but to practice the justice of God.” Such amputations are designed to shock — residents are often summoned to watch — and even as the...

The London accountant who accompanied Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to Timbuktu on three occasions in 1998, 1999 and 2000 says the 'father' of the Pakistani bomb witnessed the digging of a well, toured an ancient Islamic library and enjoyed the views of the desert. A remote outpost in the middle of the West African desert, Timbuktu usually attracts explorers associated in the popular mind with the adventures of the comic character Tin Tin. And Pakistani dissidents told rediff.com the reason for Khan's visit to Timbuktu, part of landlocked West African state of Mali, was to prospect for uranium. They say...

BAMAKO - Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants have joined forces in northern Mali and say they will create an independent Islamist state. The groups took advantage of a military coup in Bamako to seize control of the territory in early April. Resistance is growing in the north to the efforts to introduce Islamic law. In the northern Malian town of Gao, court is in session. Commissioner Abdoulaye Maiga begins by reading from the Quran in the roadside courtyard outside the former police station. Once an area businessman, Maiga is a member of the militant Islamist sect Ansar Dine that residents...

Armored vehicles rumbled through the deserted streets of Bamako, Mali, last week, while the rattle of fire from assault rifles could be heard coming from the western part of the capital, especially around the presidential guard's barracks and in the city's slums. .................................................. Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia has called the situation "very, very worrying." Mhand Berkouk, director of the Echaab Center for Strategic Studies, in Algiers, fears an "Afghanization of the entire Sahel region." Berkouk believes Azawad could become a base for terrorists from around the world.

A London accountant has described how Pakistan's disgraced nuclear hero Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan visited the West African state of Mali on three occasions between 1998 and 2000. Abdul Ma'bood Siddiqui accompanied A.Q. Khan on three mystery trips  between 1998 and 2000. Their final destination was Timbuktu, a remote outpost in the desert that has always been a magnet for explorers and adventurers from around the world. The mystery behind the visits has deepened following recent revelations that Khan is also the owner of a small hotel in the town that he has named after Hendrina, his Dutch-born wife and...