Russia\u2019s Wagner mercenary group said on Monday that its fighters and Malian soldiers took losses in heavy fighting against Tuareg rebels near Mali\u2019s border with Algeria.<\/p>\n
Mali, where military authorities seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021, is battling a years-long extremists\u2019 insurgency. It has said Russian forces there are not Wagner mercenaries but trainers helping local troops with equipment bought from Russia.
\nThe rebel movement, the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD), said on Saturday that it had seized armoured vehicles, trucks and tankers in the fighting at the border town of Tinzaouaten.
\nWagner, in a rare statement, said its forces had fought alongside Mali soldiers from July 22-27 and that Wagner fighters were commanded by Sergei Shevchenko, whose callsign was \u201cPond,\u201d near Tinzaouaten.
\n\u201cOn the first day, the \u2018Pond group\u2019 destroyed most of the [extremists] and put the rest to flight,\u201d Wagner said on Telegram. \u201cHowever, [an] ensuing sandstorm allowed the radicals to regroup and increase their numbers to 1,000 people.\u201d
\nWagner said its fighters again repulsed an attack but that under massive rebel fire, there had been losses among Wagner and the Malian army.
\nThe last message from the Wagner group on July 27 was: \u201cThe three of us stayed. We continue to fight.\u201d
\nWagner said Shevchenko was killed.
\nThe Malian army said in statements at the weekend that two of its soldiers had been killed and 10 injured.
\nOne of its helicopters had crashed in Kidal on Friday while on a routine mission but no one was killed, it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia\u2019s Wagner mercenary group said on Monday that its fighters and Malian soldiers took losses in heavy fighting against Tuareg rebels near Mali\u2019s border with Algeria. Mali, where military authorities seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021, is battling a years-long extremists\u2019 insurgency. It has said Russian forces there are not Wagner mercenaries but …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29245,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29243\/revisions\/29245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}