DHAKA: At least 17 soldiers have been killed and 35 wounded in central Mali in an assault on their military base that authorities called a ‘coordinated terrorist attack’. 

The raid on Tuesday is the biggest in months on the army in Mali, a country that faces a growing threat from armed groups based in the desert north. 

Mali’s defense minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly said that ‘the toll has increased we have lost 17 men and 35 are wounded’. 

Authorities had earlier announced 12 soldiers were killed, Al Jazeera reports on Wednesday (July 20). 

Army spokesman Souleymane Maiga told the media that the raiders briefly took control of the base in Nampala, which is set in semi-desert scrubland close to the Mauritanian border.

He further said that Malian troops retreated to nearby Diabaly to regroup.

Maiga said that three groups staged the raid Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb attacked from the north, the Macina Liberation Front linked to Ansar Dine waited outside the town to ambush military reinforcements, and an ethnic Peul group attacked from the southeast.

BDST: 1426 HRS, JUL 20, 2016
SAS/RR