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A wave of coordinated cross-national attacks carried out by separatist fighters and Islamist militants over a single weekend in Mali has led to a landmark development: Russia’s Africa Corps has formally confirmed its full withdrawal alongside Malian government forces from the strategic northern city of Kidal.

In a sequence of public posts shared across social media platforms, the Russia-aligned Africa Corps confirmed that both its own personnel and local Malian troops had exited the Kidal locality. The Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), the Tuareg separatist group leading the push for an independent northern state, announced Sunday that the Russian force had agreed to a permanent pullout. The separatist movement subsequently claimed full control of Kidal, releasing a statement declaring the city “now free” from government and allied control.

Mali has grappled with decade-long instability, pitting government and allied forces against two overlapping threats: northern separatist movements led primarily by ethnic Tuareg factions, and violent insurgent groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. This most recent outbreak of violence began Saturday, when reports of explosions and sustained automatic gunfire spread across multiple population centers nationwide, including the capital Bamako.

Attacks were also documented in central Malian cities of Sevare and Mopti, as well as the northern Saharan fringe cities of Gao and Kidal. In Kati, a garrison town just outside the capital that hosts one of Mali’s largest military bases, Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara was killed in a suicide truck bombing targeting his official residence. Security analysts confirm the FLA’s assault focused primarily on regional urban centers in the north, while Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), a jihadist insurgent group, carried out parallel strikes across multiple regions to stretch government defenses thin.

Sporadic fighting continued in Kidal through Sunday, but shortly after clashes tapered off, FLA spokesman Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane announced the group had finalized a deal with the Russian Africa Corps to facilitate the force’s safe exit from the city. Ramadane had previously told the BBC the FLA maintained a presence in Kidal’s outer neighborhoods because Malian army units and Russian mercenary personnel remained deployed in the city center.

Kidal holds deep symbolic importance for the Tuareg separatist movement: it served as the movement’s unofficial headquarters for more than a decade before Malian government troops, backed by Russian mercenary fighters, retook control of the city in late 2023. The separatist group now holds full administrative and military control of the urban center following the withdrawal.

While confirming its exit from Kidal in a Monday post on the social platform X, the Africa Corps emphasized that counter-insurgency operations would continue across other parts of Mali, though it declined to provide further details on upcoming deployments or operational goals. The force added that all wounded personnel and heavy military equipment had been fully evacuated from Kidal ahead of the pullout.

“The situation in the Republic of Mali remains complex,” the Africa Corps wrote in its statement, noting that multiple civilians had also been wounded in the fighting and were transferred to the corps’ medical facilities for treatment.

The majority of the Africa Corps’ serving fighters are veterans of the Wagner Group, the infamous Russian private military firm that built a widespread presence across Africa over the past decade, contracted by local friendly governments to help suppress insurgent movements and stabilize central control. Following the 2023 death of Wagner leader Yevgeni Prigozhin in a plane crash, most of the group’s African operations were absorbed and reorganized by Russia’s Ministry of Defense, which formed the newly branded Africa Corps to continue the mission.

Today, the Africa Corps is overseen by Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, with day-to-day operations led by Maj-Gen Andrey Averyanov, a senior core leader of Russia’s GRU military intelligence directorate. Russia’s military support to friendly African governments has consistently been rewarded with access to the continent’s lucrative critical natural resources, including gold, diamonds, and uranium, a key input for Russian domestic nuclear energy production.

Just like its predecessor the Wagner Group, the Africa Corps has faced repeated international accusations of systematic human rights abuses and mass atrocities against civilian populations across its areas of operation. Reported salaries for Africa Corps fighters deployed in Mali start at a minimum equivalent of $3,000 (£2,200) per month, a rate far higher than most local or even regular Russian military salaries.

This report included additional reporting from Vitaly Shevchenko of BBC Monitoring, with original production by BBC Africa.

ABUJA, Nigeria — Armed attackers launched a raid on an orphanage-affiliated school in north-central Nigeria over the weekend, abducting 23 young pupils before local security forces recovered 15 of the children in immediate follow-up operations, state authorities confirmed in a public announcement Monday.

The assault targeted the Dahallukitab Group of Schools, a mixed educational and orphanage facility located in a remote, cut-off area of Lokoja, the capital city of Kogi State. In an official statement, Kogi State Commissioner Kingsley Femi Fanwo noted that the institution had been operating without legal authorization from Nigerian educational regulators, a detail that raises new questions about oversight of community-based care facilities in the region.

As of Monday, no insurgent or criminal group had publicly claimed credit for the abduction. The wider north-central and northwestern regions of Nigeria have recorded a steady uptick in kidnapping-for-ransom attacks targeting civilian institutions over the past three years, with criminal gangs increasingly focusing on soft targets including schools and orphanages.

While official confirmation of the victims’ ages has not been released, local context clarifies that the term “pupil” in Nigerian educational and law enforcement discourse almost exclusively refers to young learners in kindergarten or primary school, meaning most of the abducted children are likely 12 years old or younger.

Fanwo confirmed that intensive search and rescue operations are currently underway across Lokoja and surrounding rural areas to locate the eight remaining abducted children and take the perpetrators into custody. “Our security teams are working around the clock to bring every missing child home safely and hold those responsible for this horrific attack to account,” the statement added.

Widespread school kidnappings have emerged as one of the most visible markers of the persistent insecurity plaguing Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with over 220 million residents. Security analysts who study the country’s criminal landscape explain that armed gangs deliberately target students and educational facilities because attacks on children generate widespread media and government attention, increasing pressure on authorities and families to pay large ransoms for captives’ release.

Nigeria has grappled with a layered, multi-faceted security crisis for more than a decade, with instability concentrated most heavily in the country’s northern regions. A long-running Islamist insurgency first emerged in northeast Nigeria in 2009, led by the militant group Boko Haram. The group splintered in 2016, with a breakaway faction calling itself the Islamic State’s West Africa Province, or ISWAP, which now carries out most large-scale attacks in the northeast. In recent years, a new IS-affiliated group called Lakurawa has established a foothold in northwestern communities along Nigeria’s border with Niger, further expanding the scope of extremist activity in the country.

A simmering local dispute over access to a water well has exploded into deadly inter-ethnic violence in eastern Chad, leaving at least 42 people dead and 10 others wounded, senior Chadian officials have confirmed. What began as a confrontation between two families in Wadi Fira province quickly escalated into a sustained cycle of retaliatory attacks that spread across multiple communities, leaving multiple villages burned to the ground in its wake.

Chadian government announced on Sunday that a high-level delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Limane Mahamat has been dispatched to the conflict zone to oversee security operations and mediate local tensions. Officials confirmed that the violence has now been contained, and stability is gradually being restored to the area.

Deadly inter-communal clashes are a persistent crisis across this central African nation, where long-standing frictions between farming and pastoral communities, compounded by deep-seated ethnic tensions, have created a repeating pattern of violence. Competition over increasingly scarce water resources and grazing land is the most common trigger for these outbreaks of conflict.

In recent months, the already fragile security situation along Chad’s eastern border has been further exacerbated by the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the ongoing civil war in neighboring Sudan. The influx of new residents has placed enormous additional strain on limited natural resources, driving up resource competition and stoking broader security tensions. On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Mahamat reaffirmed the Chadian government’s commitment to deploying all necessary measures to stop Sudan’s conflict from spilling over and destabilizing the country’s border regions.

This latest deadly incident is part of a years-long trend of escalating communal violence across Chad. Over the past several years, hundreds of people have been killed in these clashes; in November last year alone, 33 people died in a similar conflict over a contested water well in the southwestern town of Dibebe. Data from the International Crisis Group, a leading international think-tank, shows that between 2021 and 2024, roughly 100 separate communal clashes across the country left more than 1,000 people dead and another 2,000 injured. Global human rights organization Amnesty International has also documented seven major outbreaks of herder-farmer violence between 2022 and 2024, which collectively claimed 98 lives.

In a report released last year, Amnesty International linked the rising frequency and severity of these clashes to the accelerating impacts of climate change, which has worsened drought conditions and scarcity of critical resources across the Sahel region. The organization also criticized Chadian authorities for failing to effectively protect civilian populations, noting that security force responses to emerging violence are often delayed, and few perpetrators are ever held legally accountable for their actions. “This pattern of inaction fuels a widespread sense of impunity and deepens feelings of marginalization within affected communities,” the report stated.

In the early hours of Saturday, a long-simmering local dispute over access to a critical water source between two families in eastern Chad erupted into widespread, revenge-fueled violence that left at least 42 people dead and 10 others injured, the Central African nation’s deputy prime minister confirmed in a statement late Sunday.

Deputy Prime Minister Limane Mahamat made the confirmation during an official visit to Igote, the small border village in Wadi Fira province where the violence unfolded, located just kilometers from Chad’s shared boundary with conflict-wracked Sudan. The injured victims have already been evacuated to the region’s main provincial health facility for urgent medical care, Mahamat added.

The cycle of retaliatory attacks quickly spread across multiple communities in the area, forcing Chadian military forces to deploy to curb the violence. According to Mahamat, the army’s rapid intervention successfully halted further bloodshed, and public order has now been fully restored across the conflict zone.

In response to the violence, Chadian authorities have launched two parallel processes: a traditional community mediation initiative to resolve underlying tensions in Igote, and formal judicial investigations to hold those responsible for the deaths and destruction accountable.

Intercommunal violence driven by competition over scarce natural resources is a recurring crisis across Chad. Just last year, similar clashes between farming and pastoral communities in southwestern portions of the country also claimed 42 lives and destroyed hundreds of residential structures.

Mahamat stressed that the Chadian government will implement every necessary measure to prevent further instability in this high-risk border region, which has faced growing strain since the outbreak of full-scale civil war in Sudan in early 2023. For months, eastern Chad has hosted hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled the cross-border conflict, placing unprecedented pressure on local water, food, and land resources that has exacerbated existing intercommunal tensions.

Back in February, Chad’s government took the drastic step of closing its entire border with Sudan indefinitely, framing the move as an effort to stop the spillover of Sudanese fighting into its territory after multiple armed incursions by militias aligned with Sudan’s warring factions.

According to United Nations estimates, the ongoing civil war in Sudan has already killed more than 40,000 people, though independent humanitarian groups warn the actual death toll is likely far higher, as many casualties in hard-to-reach conflict zones are never counted. The conflict has spawned the world’s most severe current humanitarian crisis, displacing more than 14 million people from their homes, triggering widespread deadly disease outbreaks, and pushing multiple regions of Sudan into full-blown famine.