In Mali, a convoy of government troops and Russian fighters of Wagner PMC ambushed near the border with Algeria, arranged by rebel Tuareg rebels. As a result, dozens of soldiers and mercenaries were killed and wounded, writes Reuters citing a statement of the rebel movement Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD).
It said a Malian army convoy and its aides were defeated in the border town of Tinzahuaten. Footage has appeared online showing dozens of dead and captured weapons and equipment. Rebel spokesman Mohamed El-Mauloud Ramadan said that some of the Malian soldiers and mercenaries of Wagner PMC had surrendered.
The defeat of the column of Malian troops was confirmed in conversation with AFP by a local official. According to him, the military lost at least 17 people killed. A former UN mission official in Kidal in northern Mali said 15 Wagnerites had been killed or captured after three days of fighting.The rebels also shot down an Mi-24P helicopter that was covering the convoy.
Mali’s government acknowledged the July 26 skirmish. It claims that two soldiers were killed and 10 wounded, while 20 rebels were killed.
Z-channels cite different figures of losses of Wagnerites, but the number of dead is measured in dozens. A former commander of the 13th detachment of the PMC with the call sign Rusich said that the mercenaries lost almost 100 people.
“There are more than 80 people two hundred [dead] as a result of this operation. More than 15 people are in captivity. This is as far as our Russian comrades are concerned,” he clarified, adding that he had asked the Russian Defense Ministry for help.
In the ambushed convoy was one of the former commanders of Wagnerites Anton Elizarov with the call sign Lotus, who led the offensive on Soledar and Bakhmut.The PMC-affiliated telegram channel Svyatosha Broadcasts with reference to the subordinates of the mercenary reported that he was killed. At the same time, z-blogger Boris Rozhin claims that Elizarov was captured and has already been exchanged.
It is also reported about the death in Mali of the author of another telegram channel Grey Zone with the call sign White or Five Hundredth, close to Wagnerites. We are talking about a 31-year-old native of the Lipetsk region, Nikita Fedyanin. According to some reports, he was linked to the Russian Federal Security Service’s Special Forces Center. It is claimed that Fedyanin died “with a weapon in his hands”. “It’s hot in Africa, literally and figuratively, but as Yevgeny Prigozhin willed – everything as we like it! We work!”, said in one of the last publications in the channel on July 21.
These are the largest single-stage losses of Wagner PMC in Africa since the beginning of its activities on the continent. Russian mercenaries have been present in Mali since 2021: in 2020, the military once again seized power in the country, and a year later the junta invited Wagnerites to ensure its security.
The Tuaregs are an ethnic group inhabiting the northern part of the country, where they are trying to establish the independent state of Azawad. Among them there are radical Islamists. In particular, as Baza writes, the jihadist group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb took responsibility for the attack on the convoy of Malian troops and Wagner PMC.
