“I see only six bodies, the others are injured,” said a hospital source, without further details. A military source confirmed a provisional death toll of six, suggesting the possibility of casualties.
The G5 is a taskforce of soldiers from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania created last year to root out violence in West Africa’s semi-arid Sahel region.
Violence by militants has proliferated in the sparsely-populated Sahel in recent years, with groups linked to al Qaeda and Daesh using central and northern Mali as a launchpad for attacks across the region.
