At least fifty Malian soldiers and five Russian paramilitaries attached to Africa Corps, the structure that took over from Wagner, were killed on Thursday, September 10, when jihadist fighters overran the military camp at Dioura, in central Mali. Local authorities confirmed the scale of the massacre on Monday, September 14, and announced that “air and ground operations against the assailants” had been set in motion.

A rare-scale assault on the Dioura garrison

After some fifteen years of conflict, the Dioura attack ranks among the deadliest ever suffered by Mali’s armed forces. The provisional toll stands at no fewer than fifty Malian troops and five Russian paramilitaries serving with Africa Corps.

Fighters from the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda affiliate, claimed responsibility for the operation on the very day it was carried out. Several dozen Malian soldiers were also taken prisoner, according to the accounts I collected on the ground.

Diverging death tolls and dozens of soldiers captured

“The toll is high,” an officer deployed at the scene told me. A security official in Mopti, in the centre of the country, spoke of “more than 60 soldiers killed in the attack, plus around sixty others taken prisoner”. A local elected representative, meanwhile, mentioned “at least 80 soldiers killed and many prisoners”.

“The jihadists attacked the Dioura camp and came back the following day… the army sent no reinforcements to the site,” the same official added.

JNIM claims responsibility as the army launches air and ground operations

In a statement published on Sunday about the situation in Dioura, the Malian army announced “air and ground operations launched against the assailants”, reporting the “neutralisation”, south-west of the town, of “several terrorist elements on motorcycles who were trying to hide under vegetation cover”.

A security crisis that has worsened since April 2026

Since 2012, Mali has been wrestling with a deep security crisis, fuelled by jihadist groups, their Tuareg separatist allies in the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and communal criminal networks.

The Sahelian state, run by a junta, has drawn closer to Russia, whose Africa Corps paramilitaries assist its counter-jihadist campaign. Its security predicament has grown even more critical since late April 2026, when JNIM jihadists allied with the FLA rebellion launched a wave of coordinated attacks on strategic positions held by the junta and the army in several towns, including on the outskirts of Bamako, the capital.

Those operations cost the life of the defence minister.

Anéfis, July 2026: a convoy decimated

On July 18, at least 50 other soldiers had already been killed in Mali, when the coalition of Tuareg separatists and jihadists ambushed an army convoy leaving the strategic northern town of Anéfis on its way to the large city of Gao.