The troops’ vehicle hit a mine and they were then ambushed by Jihadist groups.

Nine Malian soldiers were killed and five wounded in an area regularly targeted by Jihadist groups, as the commander of France’s counter-terrorism force for the region said an operation on the Burkina Faso border was ongoing.

“A supply mission for the national armed forces fell into an ambush between Dogofri and Nampala. The initial toll is nine dead and five wounded,” Commerce Minister and government spokesman Abdel Karim Konate said in a statement. He condemned the “cowardly and barbaric act” and said, “our commitment, as well as that of our partners, is to relentlessly pursue the fight against terrorism and drug-trafficking” in Mali.

A Malian military source earlier said eight soldiers were killed and four wounded in the attack in the central region of Segou.

Familiar Jihadist tactic

The troops’ vehicle hit a mine and they were then ambushed by the group, a Malian security source told AFP, recounting what is a familiar Jihadist tactic.

Nampala, a garrison town near the Mauritanian border, has been targeted by several Jihadist attacks.

Three Malian Jihadist groups with previous Al-Qaeda links recently joined forces to create the “Group to Support Islam and Muslims” (GSIM), led by Iyad Ag Ghaly of Islamist organisation Ansar Dine, and have also killed soldiers further east near the Burkina Faso border.

Troops from Operation Barkhane, a French counter-terrorism operation, announced at the weekend they had killed or captured 20 Jihadists in the forest of Foulsare near the border of Mali and Burkina Faso.

Operation not over

Barkhane’s commander Francois-Xavier de Woillemont said in Ouagadougou the operation was not yet over, and the final goal of such missions was “to get rid of the terrorists” who “harass local people and stop them living a normal life.”

It was the next step in operations undertaken in the zone “where we know that terrorists come to hide,” he added.

Last July, 17 soldiers were killed in an attack on a military base in Nampala claimed by Ansar Dine.