Visual Timelines · 2012–2026
In January 2012 a Tuareg separatist rebellion broke out in northern Mali. Within three months a coup had toppled the government in Bamako and jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda had taken Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal. A French intervention, a UN mission and a peace agreement followed; none brought the war to an end.
This timeline follows how the conflict moved south from the desert into central Mali and towards the capital, how al-Qaeda's affiliate JNIM and the Islamic State's Sahel branch grew into the main armed forces outside the state, and how the coups of 2020 and 2021, the departure of France and the UN and the arrival of Russian forces changed the country. It runs to 22 October 2026, after the largest offensive the insurgents have yet mounted.
Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (NASA) · original
Rebellion and the fall of the north
Fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a secular Tuareg separatist movement, attacked the army base at Ménaka. Over the following weeks the MNLA and the jihadist groups Ansar Dine, AQIM and MUJAO overran army camps in the Kidal region, among them Aguelhok and Tessalit. The separatists wanted their own state; the jihadists did not.
Rebellion and the fall of the north
After a week-long siege, armed groups overran the army camp at Aguelhok on 24 January. Soldiers who had surrendered or were wounded were shot. The UN Commission of Inquiry counted about a hundred dead and attributed the assault to Ansar Dine and AQIM. The killings caused deep anger in the army and among the public in the south.
Rebellion and the fall of the north
Soldiers angered by the defeats in the north mutinied at the Kati camp and marched on Bamako. On 22 March Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo's junta suspended the Constitution and overthrew President Amadou Toumani Touré, weeks before a scheduled election. Under a deal with ECOWAS on 6 April, the speaker of parliament, Dioncounda Traoré, became interim president.
Rebellion and the fall of the north
In three days armed groups took Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, the three northern regional capitals. On 6 April the MNLA proclaimed an independent state of Azawad, which no government recognised. Ansar Dine, which held Kidal and, with AQIM, Timbuktu, rejected independence and said it fought for Islam. Human Rights Watch counted at least 284,000 people displaced.
Rebellion and the fall of the north
On 27 June MUJAO drove the MNLA out of Gao; jihadist groups now held all three northern capitals. Days later Ansar Dine and AQIM began smashing Sufi mausoleums in Timbuktu, a World Heritage site. Islamic courts ordered floggings, amputations and executions. The UN Commission of Inquiry documented at least 84 cases of rape by members of both the MNLA and jihadist groups.
Intervention
Ansar Dine, AQIM and MUJAO pushed south and took Konna, the last town before the army base at Sévaré. At the interim government's request France intervened on 11 January, alongside the African mission AFISMA that the Security Council had authorised in December. By the end of January French and Malian troops had retaken Gao and Timbuktu.
Intervention
As the army advanced, soldiers detained and executed men they accused of supporting the jihadists, most of them Fulani, Tuareg or Arab. In Sévaré, the UN Commission of Inquiry found, at least 12 people were executed and thrown into wells on 11 January. After Timbuktu was retaken, most Tuareg and Arab families fled the city for fear of reprisals.
Intervention
The Security Council created the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, authorising up to 11,200 troops and 1,440 police; on 1 July it took over the African troops of AFISMA. In June a preliminary agreement signed in Ouagadougou with the MNLA and the HCUA allowed a presidential election. Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta won it in August with 77.6% of the vote.
Intervention
Fighting broke out during Prime Minister Moussa Mara's visit to Kidal. On 21 May an army assault was repulsed by the MNLA and allied armed groups, and within days the troops had left the town. MINUSMA confirmed 41 deaths, eight of them civilians. The army would not retake Kidal until November 2023.
A peace on paper
Attacks on Nampala and Ténenkou in January opened a new front in the Mopti and Ségou regions. A newly created group, the Macina Liberation Front, later known as Katiba Macina, claimed the Ténenkou attack. Its leader, the Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa, recruited among communities with grievances over abuses by security forces, corruption, land disputes and banditry.
A peace on paper
Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and broke away from al-Mourabitoun, an al-Qaeda-aligned group. The Islamic State accepted the pledge in October 2016. The new group operated where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet. The United States designated it a terrorist organisation in 2018; the UN listed it in 2020.
A peace on paper
The government and the pro-government Platform signed the Algiers peace agreement in Bamako on 15 May; the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), the separatist coalition, signed on 20 June. It promised decentralisation, the integration of fighters and joint patrols. Jihadist groups were not party to it. In August a Platform militia seized Anéfis from the CMA, the first major ceasefire violation.
A peace on paper
Gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako and fired indiscriminately on guests and staff. Malian special forces, supported by MINUSMA, ended the siege the same day. The UN counted 19 civilians and one soldier killed, besides three attackers. The government declared a state of emergency. Two months later a hotel in Ouagadougou was attacked in a similar way.
A peace on paper
Ansar Dine, AQIM's Sahara branch, al-Mourabitoun and the Macina Liberation Front announced their merger as Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) under Iyad Ag Ghaly, as al-Qaeda's branch in Mali. Six weeks earlier a suicide car bomb claimed by al-Mourabitoun had killed 54 people in Gao, at the camp where army, CMA and Platform fighters were preparing joint patrols.
A peace on paper
Massacres by community militias and by armed men from rival communities hit Fulani and Dogon villages in central Mali. On 1 January 37 Fulani civilians were killed at Koulogon. On 23 March armed men described by the UN as mainly Dozo hunters killed at least 157 Fulani at Ogossagou, 46 of them children. In June at least 35 Dogon villagers were killed at Sobane Da.
A peace on paper
Attackers overran the army camps at Boulkessi and Mondoro, near the border with Burkina Faso, and the post of Indelimane in the Ménaka region, where at least 53 soldiers died. The UN counted 193 soldiers killed in three months, and the army withdrew from several exposed posts. In January 2020 France and the G5 Sahel states agreed in Pau to focus on the Islamic State.
Juntas and new partners
After months of street protests, soldiers detained President Keïta and took him to the Kati camp, where he resigned on television. A junta in which Colonel Assimi Goïta emerged as leader promised a transition. In May 2021, after a cabinet reshuffle dropped two officers, soldiers detained the interim president and prime minister, who resigned, and Goïta took power.
Juntas and new partners
Fifteen Western governments condemned the deployment of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries in Mali in December 2021. France announced its withdrawal in February 2022, and the last Barkhane troops left Mali through Gao on 15 August. In 2023 Russian officials confirmed to UN investigators that Wagner was operating in Mali as a private contractor, alongside a small number of Russian military instructors.
Juntas and new partners
After clashes with Tuareg armed groups in March, Islamic State fighters attacked dozens of villages in the Ménaka and Gao regions, killing hundreds of civilians, many of them Daoussahak, and raping women and girls. Tens of thousands fled. The UN Panel of Experts found that the group had almost doubled its areas of control in Mali in less than a year.
Juntas and new partners
During an operation against Katiba Macina, Malian troops and foreign military personnel took over Moura, a market town in the Mopti region, and over the following days executed people they had detained. The UN human rights office found reasonable grounds to believe that at least 500 people were killed and 58 women and girls raped. The government said 203 'terrorists' died.
Juntas and new partners
At the transitional government's request the Security Council ended MINUSMA's mandate and set 31 December as the date to complete its withdrawal. After ten years the mission closed on schedule. Fighting between the army and the separatist movements followed over the camps it vacated in the north, Kidal among them.
Juntas and new partners
With Wagner fighters alongside, the army took Kidal, held by the separatists since 2014; the separatist coalition said it withdrew for strategic reasons. On 25 January 2024 the junta ended the 2015 Algiers agreement with immediate effect, accusing Algeria of hostile acts. 'All negotiation channels are now closed,' a separatist spokesman said.
Siege and offensive
Near the Algerian border, separatist fighters routed an army and Wagner column after three days of fighting; Wagner acknowledged losses. Mali broke off relations with Ukraine after a Ukrainian intelligence spokesman suggested the rebels had received help. A month later a drone strike on Tinzaouaten killed seven civilians, five of them children, Human Rights Watch found.
Siege and offensive
At dawn JNIM fighters attacked the gendarmerie training school and the military zone of Bamako's airport, and claimed the attack. The junta acknowledged 'some losses' but published no toll. A security source told AFP that 77 people were killed and 255 wounded. The attack showed JNIM could strike inside the capital.
Siege and offensive
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, all ruled by juntas, formed the Alliance of Sahel States in September 2023 and turned it into a confederation by a treaty signed in Niamey in July 2024. Their withdrawal from ECOWAS took effect on 29 January 2025. In June 2025 Wagner announced it was leaving Mali; Russian personnel stayed under Africa Corps, which answers to Russia's Ministry of Defence.
Siege and offensive
On 1 July JNIM attacked army positions in seven towns of western and central Mali, including Kayes, Nioro du Sahel and Diboli. From September it blockaded fuel imports, attacking and destroying hundreds of tankers on the roads from neighbouring countries. Bamako ran short of fuel and electricity, and schools and universities closed nationwide from 27 October to 9 November.
Siege and offensive
JNIM and the separatist Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) attacked Kati, Bamako, Kidal, Gao, Sévaré and Mopti at the same time. In Kati a suicide car bomb killed Defence Minister Sadio Camara. The FLA took Kidal; Russia's Defence Ministry confirmed that Africa Corps had withdrawn. Africa Corps reportedly negotiated safe corridors out of other northern posts, and JNIM announced a blockade of Bamako.
Siege and offensive
Coordinated attacks claimed by JNIM and the FLA hit army positions in the north and the centre; the army also reported an attack on the Kenieroba prison, south-west of Bamako, and said all were repelled. On 18 July the two groups ambushed an army and Africa Corps convoy on the Anéfis–Gao road. At least 19 soldiers who had surrendered were tortured and executed, Human Rights Watch found.
Siege and offensive
Human Rights Watch documented Africa Corps air strikes on villages and a raid on Bombori, in the Mopti region, in which Russian fighters killed nine villagers, four of them children. Apparent army drone strikes hit a market and a health centre. Amnesty International found JNIM ultimatums and forced recruitment driving families into exile; by July UNHCR counted 290,000 Malian refugees in eastern Mauritania.
Siege and offensive
JNIM fighters overran the army camp at Dioura, in central Mali, and released videos of dozens of captured soldiers giving their names. The army announced air and ground operations against the attackers but gave no toll. A week later troops had not returned to the camp, according to RFI.
Siege and offensive
Five months after losing Kidal, the government announced that troops 'supported by their Russian partners' had consolidated their positions in the city after intense air and ground operations. The FLA called it a strategic and controlled withdrawal forced by Africa Corps air power. The army was back in the town that symbolises the northern rebellions.
Siege and offensive
Gunmen killed at least 48 civilians in at least five localities of the Ménaka region, burning houses and stealing livestock, and hundreds of people fled to the town of Ménaka. A local lawmaker and other sources blamed the Islamic State's Sahel branch, which, according to AP, accused villagers of informing the army. The army said it struck a militant base south-west of Ménaka.
Scroll or drag the timeline; use the arrow keys between events. Select an event for details, map and sources.
In 2012 the war was fought in the north, around Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu. Each arc below joins Kidal to an attack or offensive that marked the conflict's arrival in a new area — central Mali, the capital, a neighbouring country, the far west — to show how it moved south over fourteen years. Press play to watch the sequence.
Ansar Dine, AQIM and MUJAO took the last town before the Sévaré base, prompting the French intervention.
A new group, the Macina Liberation Front, claimed an attack on the prefecture: the start of the war in the centre.
Uncertainty: The claim was reported by the UN; the group's founding date is not documented.
Gunmen killed 20 people at the Radisson Blu hotel, the deadliest attack in the capital up to then; a restaurant attack in March 2015 had killed five.
Uncertainty: Competing claims by al-Mourabitoun with AQIM and by the Macina Liberation Front.
A hotel attack in Burkina Faso's capital followed the same pattern as Bamako; the UN said it was reportedly carried out by three Malians.
Uncertainty: The UN Secretary-General reported the attackers' nationality; it was not established in court.
Car bombs claimed by JNIM's Katiba Macina hit the main army base outside the capital, the seat of the junta's power.
JNIM attacked seven towns in western and central Mali, Kayes and Diboli near the Senegalese border among them, then blockaded fuel bound for Bamako.
During the second coordinated wave by JNIM and the FLA, the army reported an attack on the prison where opposition figures are held.
Uncertainty: The army confirmed an attack at Kenieroba; no source attributes it to a specific group.
Kidal is used as the origin because the 2012 rebellion and the jihadist takeover began in the north; the arcs do not imply that each attack was directed from there.
Mali's armed groups are not one movement. Separatists fought for a state of their own; jihadist groups fought for an Islamic order and rejected independence. Each line shows when a group is documented as active; numbered marks are the splits, mergers and alliances that reshaped them. A shared front does not mean a shared ideology.
Documented activityReported, assessed or disputedNumbered turning points
The separatist line covers successive coalitions: the MNLA, the CMA, the CSP and, from 2024, the FLA. Hatched bars: activity that is assessed rather than documented in detail.
Each map shows the places of the events of one phase in colour, and those of earlier phases in grey. They show the reach of the conflict, not territorial control: no open source maps the armed groups' control of Mali in a consistent, dated way.
Tolls are the figures given by the cited sources; where counts differ, the range or the competing figures are given.
Separatist movements (the MNLA, the CMA and today's FLA) seek self-rule for the north they call Azawad. Jihadist groups (Ansar Dine, AQIM, MUJAO, al-Mourabitoun, Katiba Macina, then JNIM and the Islamic State's Sahel branch) fight for an Islamic order and rejected independence. Their cooperation in 2012 and again in 2026 is described here as an alliance of separate movements: in 2026 the FLA reportedly accepted a moderate form of Sharia in jointly held areas, but it remains a separatist movement and is not on the UN sanctions list.
Terrorism, here, means violence by a non-state group against civilians or symbolic targets to intimidate a population or pressure a government. Fighting between armed groups and the army is armed conflict. Killings of civilians by the army, its Russian partners or community militias are recorded as abuses or massacres, with the responsible party named, and are not labelled terrorism.
Other countries in this atlas share actors or patterns with Mali. These links point to documented connections, not to a single causal story.
Visual Timelines · NigeriaNigeria: from Boko Haram to ISWAPThe Islamic State's West Africa Province helped prepare the January 2026 attack by the Sahel branch on Niamey airport, the UN reports.
Visual Timelines · SomaliaSomalia: al-Shabaab and the African UnionAnother al-Qaeda affiliate that grew out of a collapsed state and outlasted years of foreign and regional military intervention.
Analysis · SahelThe Sahel: terrorism, state fragility and the new security orderHow Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger became the deadliest jihadist theatre, why the model built after 2013 collapsed and what the juntas' alliance with Russia has delivered.Every event rests on at least one identified document. Links open the original source; certainty labels follow the portal's source and confidence criteria.
1 · A separatist rebellion in the north
Places: Ménaka · Tessalit
Uncertainty: The MNLA and the jihadist groups fought side by side at first; the UN Commission of Inquiry describes them as 'allies at the beginning of the crisis', an alliance that lasted until the end of May 2012.
The UN Commission of Inquiry dates the start of the crisis to this attack. Photograph: The fort overlooking the southern entrance to Tessalit, in the far north of Mali, photographed in 1982. The army camps near Tessalit fell in early 2012.
Photo: Martinvl · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · original
2 · Soldiers executed at Aguelhok
Places: Aguelhok
Uncertainty: Tolls range from about a hundred (UN Commission of Inquiry) to at least 128 (Al Jazeera, 2013); Mali and France said 82 men were executed. The MNLA first claimed the attack and later denied taking part. The Commission says responsibility remains highly contested.
Photograph: Stony hamada desert south of Aguelhok, in the Kidal region (1990).
Photo: Albert Backer · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 · original
3 · A mutiny becomes a coup
Places: Kati · Bamako
The UN Commission of Inquiry found that at least six people were shot dead during the mutiny and the coup, and that the coup deepened the army's disorganisation in the north. Photograph: Malian soldiers on guard outside the Kati barracks, headquarters of coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo, October 2012.
Photo: Magharebia · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 · original
4 · The north falls; the MNLA declares 'Azawad'
Places: Kidal · Gao · Timbuktu
Human Rights Watch documented looting of hospitals and aid stocks, rapes and the recruitment of children by the armed groups in the first weeks. Photograph: Timbuktu seen by satellite in March 2017, on the edge of the Sahara north of the Niger river.
Photo: Planet Labs, Inc. · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · original
5 · Jihadist rule and the Timbuktu mausoleums
Places: Gao · Timbuktu
In September 2016 the International Criminal Court sentenced Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi to nine years for the destruction of ten Timbuktu sites. Photograph: A manuscript burnt at the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, photographed in January 2013 after armed groups withdrew from the city.
Photo: UNESCO Bureau of Mali · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 igo · original
6 · Konna falls; France launches Operation Serval
Places: Konna · Sévaré · Gao · Timbuktu
Uncertainty: The UN Secretary-General dates the first clashes near Konna to 8 January; the Commission of Inquiry says the town fell on the evening of 10 January.
In Kidal only French troops entered, which left the MNLA in control of the town. The Commission of Inquiry documented a helicopter strike on Konna on 11 January that killed a woman and her three children. Photograph: French troops leave a US Air Force C-17 transport aircraft in Bamako on 21 January 2013, ten days into Operation Serval.
Photo: U.S. Air Force, Senior Airman James Richardson · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (US military) · original
7 · Army reprisals against Fulani, Tuareg and Arab men
Places: Sévaré · Timbuktu
Human Rights Watch documented at least 13 summary executions and five disappearances in Sévaré, Konna and nearby villages in the first weeks of the counter-offensive. Photograph: A road in Sévaré, the garrison town next to Mopti that the January 2013 jihadist offensive was approaching.
Photo: David Sessoms · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0 · original
8 · The UN deploys MINUSMA
Places: Bamako
By June 2018, 174 peacekeepers had died, 101 of them in hostile acts, according to the UN Secretary-General.
Photo: Kassim Traoré (VOA) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (VOA) · original
9 · Defeat in Kidal
Places: Kidal
Uncertainty: The government blamed the armed groups for killing six civil servants at the governorate; the MNLA said the army provoked the fighting.
On 1 August 2014 France replaced Serval with Barkhane, a regional counter-terrorism operation run with the five G5 Sahel states. Photograph: Dutch Apache helicopters of MINUSMA land at Camp Castor in Gao on 16 May 2014, the eve of the fighting in Kidal.
Photo: Ministerie van Defensie (Netherlands) · Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · original
10 · The war moves to central Mali
Places: Nampala
Uncertainty: The group's founding date is not documented; UN reports first name it in January 2015. The UN did not establish who carried out the Nampala attack, in which 11 soldiers died. Koufa's role rests on Human Rights Watch and other research, not on a claim.
Photograph: The Inner Niger Delta in central Mali seen from space (NASA, January 2020).
Photo: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · original
11 · The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara
Places: Ménaka
The UN sanctions list describes it as a splinter of al-Mourabitoun that committed attacks in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Photograph: A Dutch MINUSMA armoured vehicle in the Indelimane area, Ménaka region, in February 2015: the borderlands where the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara would take root.
Photo: Ministerie van Defensie (Netherlands) · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · original
12 · A peace agreement, without the jihadists
Places: Bamako · Anéfis
Photograph: The desert road from Gao to the north, towards Anéfis, Kidal and Tessalit, photographed in 1982.
Photo: Martinvl · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · original
13 · Gunmen kill 20 at the Radisson Blu
Places: Bamako
Uncertainty: Al-Mourabitoun, together with AQIM, and the Macina Liberation Front each claimed the attack; President Keïta pointed to the Macina group. Early press tolls reached 27.
Photograph: Bamako on the Niger River. Since September 2025 the Malian capital has faced a JNIM fuel blockade, extended to its access roads in April 2026.
Photo: GMason · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · original
14 · Four groups merge into JNIM
Places: Gao
Uncertainty: Tolls for the Gao bombing of 18 January 2017 range from 54 (UN) to 60 (President Keïta).
The United States designated JNIM a terrorist organisation in September 2018; the UN added it to its sanctions list on 4 October 2018. Photograph: A Dutch MINUSMA reconnaissance vehicle on patrol around Gao, December 2017.
Photo: Ministerie van Defensie (Netherlands) · Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · original
15 · Massacres in Fulani and Dogon villages
Places: Koulogon · Ogossagou · Sobane Da
Uncertainty: The government dissolved the Dogon militia Dan Na Ambassagou after Ogossagou; its leader denied involvement. The first toll for Sobane Da, 95, was revised to 35. Responsibility rests on UN findings; no court has ruled on these massacres.
A second attack on Ogossagou on 14 February 2020 killed at least 35 Fulani, hours after soldiers left their post in the village (UN, Human Rights Watch). Photograph: Cliff dwellings on the Bandiagara escarpment, in the Dogon country of the Mopti region, where the 2019 massacres took place on the plain below.
Photo: Ferdinand Reus · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0 · original
16 · The army loses its outposts
Places: Boulkessi · Indelimane
Uncertainty: JNIM claimed Boulkessi and Mondoro and said it killed at least 85 soldiers; the government gave 40 dead. The Islamic State claimed Indelimane. The G5 Sahel first blamed another group, Ansarul Islam (The Defense Post).
Photograph: Malian special forces training during the multinational Flintlock exercise, February 2019.
Photo: US Africa Command · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 · original
17 · Two coups in nine months
Places: Kati · Bamako
The UN, the African Union, ECOWAS, the European Union and the United States jointly condemned the detentions of May 2021. Photograph: Colonel Assimi Goïta (centre) with members of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People, the day after the coup of 18 August 2020.
Photo: Kassim Traoré (VOA) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (VOA) · original
18 · Wagner arrives; France leaves
Places: Gao
Uncertainty: The date Wagner arrived and the number of its personnel have not been established.
France lost 59 soldiers in the Sahel in nine years of operations (AFP). Photograph: Officials at the launch of works at Gao airport, October 2017. The last troops of France's Barkhane force left Mali through Gao in August 2022.
Photo: Kassim Traoré (VOA) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (VOA) · original
19 · The Islamic State's war on the Ménaka region
Places: Ménaka
Uncertainty: Death tolls are local estimates: community leaders spoke of nearly 1,000 killed, and Human Rights Watch could not confirm the totals. Pro-government armed groups carried out reprisals of their own.
Photograph: The arch at the entrance to Ménaka, August 2017.
Photo: Kassim Traoré (VOA) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (VOA) · original
20 · The Moura massacre
Places: Moura
Uncertainty: The UN did not identify the foreign personnel; Human Rights Watch's sources and the UN Panel of Experts presumed them to be Russian Wagner fighters. Mali denied UN investigators access to the town.
Photograph: The Niger River at Mopti, central Mali, the heartland of Katiba Macina's insurgency.
Photo: Annabel Symington · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 · original
21 · MINUSMA is told to leave
Places: Bamako
Photograph: The last Dutch MINUSMA patrol returns to Gao, April 2019, as European contingents began to leave the mission.
Photo: Ministerie van Defensie (Netherlands) · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · original
22 · The army retakes Kidal; the peace deal ends
Places: Kidal
Photograph: The desert between Gao and Tessalit, in the region of Kidal, photographed in 1982.
Photo: Martinvl · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · original
23 · Wagner's defeat at Tinzaouaten
Places: Tinzaouaten
Uncertainty: The separatists claimed 84 Wagner fighters and 47 Malian soldiers killed; JNIM, which fought nearby, claimed its own toll. AFP could not corroborate either figure. Ukraine's role has not been established.
Photograph: A dust storm over the Algeria–Mali border seen by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite, 30 March 2026. Tinzaouaten lies on this border.
Photo: Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery, European Commission (DG DEFIS) · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0 · original
24 · JNIM strikes Bamako
Places: Bamako
Uncertainty: A confidential official document cited by AFP put the dead at about 100; diplomats told Reuters the toll was in the seventies.
Photograph: French soldiers watch the flight line at Bamako international airport, 23 January 2013. The airport's military zone was attacked by JNIM in September 2024.
Photo: U.S. Air Force, Staff Sgt. Brandi Hansen · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (US military) · original
25 · A Sahel confederation; Wagner gives way to Africa Corps
Places: Niamey · Bamako
Uncertainty: Why Wagner left has not been established; analysts point to its losses in the north.
26 · The fuel siege of Bamako
Places: Kayes · Nioro du Sahel · Bamako
Uncertainty: The army said it killed more than 80 attackers on 1 July; JNIM said it took three barracks. Neither claim was independently verified.
Photograph: A street in Kayes, the main city of western Mali, attacked by JNIM in July 2025 (photograph from 2006).
Photo: NOAA (AMMA campaign) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (US government) · original
27 · Coordinated offensive; the defence minister is killed
Places: Kati · Kidal · Gao · Sévaré
Uncertainty: There is no full toll. ACAPS counted at least 23 dead by 28 April; the UN says JNIM itself suffered several hundred casualties. Figures given by the army and Russia for attackers killed are unverified. The UN says the offensive was planned and conducted jointly, deepening earlier tactical coordination; the FLA is not on its sanctions list. ICCT reports that the FLA accepted a moderate form of Sharia in areas held jointly with JNIM.
Photograph: The entrance to the Soundiata Keïta military camp in Kati, near Bamako, in 2020. The coups of 2012, 2020 and 2021 began here; in April 2026 the defence minister was killed in Kati.
Photo: VOA Bambara · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (VOA) · original
28 · A second wave, and executed prisoners
Places: Anéfis · Aguelhok · Konna · Kenieroba · Tabrichat
Uncertainty: A source close to the FLA put the convoy dead at more than 50; Reuters could not confirm it. Human Rights Watch could not determine whether the men filmed shooting prisoners were JNIM or FLA fighters. JNIM told the organisation the killings took place but that it had not ordered them; the FLA rejected any role. The Kenieroba attack has not been attributed to a specific group.
Photograph: Malian soldiers in Gao, April 2013.
Photo: VOA · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (VOA) · original
29 · Civilians caught between both sides
Places: Bombori · Mbera camp
Uncertainty: The findings rest on witness interviews, videos and satellite images; neither Bamako nor Moscow answered Human Rights Watch. ACLED data cited by the organisation show 89 civilians killed in air strikes between April and August 2026, against 44 a year earlier.
Photograph: A sign at a food distribution site for displaced people in Bamako, February 2013, listing each person's monthly ration.
Photo: UK Department for International Development (DFID) · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 · original
30 · The fall of the Dioura camp
Places: Dioura
Uncertainty: Sources cited by AFP counted at least 50 soldiers and five Africa Corps members killed; RFI later reported at least a hundred dead. There is no official figure.
Photograph: A Malian soldier during the Flintlock exercise near Bamako, November 2008.
Photo: U.S. Air Force · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (US military) · original
31 · The army returns to Kidal
Places: Kidal
Uncertainty: The two sides give opposing accounts: the army describes a military operation, the armed groups say the troops entered without a fight. No casualty figures have been published.
32 · Massacre in the Ménaka region
Places: Ménaka
Uncertainty: The Islamic State has not claimed the killings. Reuters' sources put the toll between 48 and more than 70.
Events were selected for the change they mark in the war — in who holds territory, in the groups' organisation, in foreign involvement or in the harm done to civilians — rather than for their death toll alone. Each rests on at least one primary or independent source: UN Security Council and Secretary-General documents, the UN Commission of Inquiry for Mali, the UN human rights office, the Panel of Experts and the Monitoring Team; Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International; ACLED, ACAPS and FEWS NET; official records; and contemporaneous reporting by Al Jazeera, AFP, Reuters, AP, RFI and others.
Figures are given only when an identified source publishes them; claims by governments and armed groups are labelled as such. Where sources disagree on a date, a toll or the group responsible, the entry says so. Places are mapped as points; no area of control is drawn. Information is current to 22 October 2026.
