Just days after launching the largest coordinated attacks against Mali’s ruling military government in nearly 15 years, Tuareg separatist rebels have publicly pledged to bring down the country’s junta and seize full control of northern Mali, a senior spokesperson confirmed in an interview with Agence France-Presse this Wednesday. The weekend offensive, a joint operation between the Tuareg-dominated separatist coalition Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and the Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), marked a dramatic escalation of the West African nation’s 13-year security crisis. The insurgents launched a coordinated dawn assault on multiple strategic junta positions, including sites near the capital Bamako, leaving at least 23 people dead, with the death toll projected to rise as casualty counts are finalized. Among those killed in the two days of fierce fighting was Malian Defence Minister Sadio Camara, widely recognized as the architect of the junta’s decision to pivot away from Western partners and align with Russia. Camara’s funeral is scheduled to take place on Thursday. The combined insurgent forces successfully captured Kidal, a critical northern trade and administrative hub, earlier this week. Tuareg rebels have maintained visible patrols across the town’s streets since the takeover. In response, the Malian military launched a series of retaliatory airstrikes against insurgent positions in Kidal on Wednesday, targeting a key military camp and fighters stationed at the regional government building. A senior Malian security source told AFP that the armed forces “intend to give these enemies no respite”, a claim later confirmed by an official FLA spokesperson. The insurgent campaign did not end with Kidal’s capture: rebels also attacked a small military outpost in Gourma Rharous, a town located in Mali’s Timbuktu region, over the past week, and targeted multiple other major population centers during the weekend offensive, including the northern hub Gao and the central Malian cities of Mopti and Sevare. FLA spokesperson Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, speaking to AFP during a visit to Paris, confirmed that the insurgent coalition’s next objectives are to seize full control of Gao, Timbuktu and Menaka, building on their recent victory in Kidal. Local sources in the Gao region have already reported that Malian army units have withdrawn from multiple forward positions in the area amid the insurgent advance. After three days out of the public eye, junta leader Assimi Goita addressed the nation on national television late Tuesday, acknowledging the security situation was “of extreme gravity” but insisting that the government had the crisis “under control”. Ramadane rejected that claim, stating bluntly that “the regime will fall, sooner or later”. The Sahel region has been grappling with widespread jihadist insurgency since 2012, when a combination of Tuareg separatists and jihadist fighters first seized large swathes of northern Mali. That original 2012 alliance ultimately collapsed, with jihadists driving separatist forces out of most captured territory before a French military intervention pushed the insurgents back. France has since fully withdrawn from Mali, following the junta’s decision to sever diplomatic and security ties with former colonial power Paris and other Western nations, a shift mirrored by military-led governments in neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso. The Malian junta has since aligned itself closely with Moscow. The Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, which had fought alongside Malian forces against insurgents since 2021, reorganized into the Africa Corps, a unit under direct control of the Russian defense ministry, in June 2025 following the group’s mutiny against the Russian government. Analysts note that while the FLA and JNIM hold vastly different end goals—separatists seek an independent state of Azawad for northern Mali’s Tuareg, Fulani and Arab communities, while jihadists aim to establish an Islamic emirate—the two groups have united over their shared opposition to the 2020 junta and Russian military presence in the country. Ramadane clarified that the FLA’s core demand is the permanent withdrawal of all Russian forces from Azawad and the entirety of Mali, stating: “We have no particular problem with Russia, nor with any other country. Our problem is with the regime that governs Bamako.” The latest large-scale offensive has cast serious doubt on the junta’s repeated claims that its counterinsurgency strategy, security partnerships and expanded military operations have successfully stemmed the growing jihadist and separatist threat across the country.