At least 12 soldiers were killed when militants attacked an army base and an adjacent town in central Mali on Tuesday, firing on troop positions, burning buildings and pillaging shops, officials said.
“They attacked the city and the army posts, plundered stores, burned public buildings and then left,” army spokesman Souleymane Maiga told Reuters.
At least 12 soldiers were killed and 27 wounded in the attack, according to a senior local elected official and a local security source.
The official said the assailants had briefly taken control of the military base in Nampala, in semi-desert scrubland close to the Mauritanian border, and that Malian troops had then retreated to nearby Diabaly to regroup.
A separate Malian intelligence source told Reuters that, after briefly seizing the base, the militants retreated into a forest with weapons and vehicles they had seized.

Source: Arab News