Al Qaeda says Mali attack punishment for cooperation with France
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The attack struck at the heart of still-fragile efforts by the government and rival armed groups to work together to quell violence that has plagued the restive desert north for years.
The bombers forced their way into the camp shortly before 9 a.m. (0900 GMT), running over several people before blowing up their vehicle just as 600 soldiers were assembling, said Radhia Achouri, a spokeswoman for Mali's U.N. peacekeeping force MINUSMA.
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| Soldiers line up the bodies of the victims after a suicide car bomb attack on a military camp in Gao, Mali January 18, 2017 in this still image taken from video. REUTERS/via Reuters TV |
"We will fight you. We will defeat you. You will not have the last word," President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said in a televised address late on Wednesday.
Mali will observe three days of national mourning.
In a statement released by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) translated by the SITE Intelligence Group, the militant group said the attack was carried out by its close ally al Mourabitoun.
It gave the bomber's name as Abdul Hadi al-Fulani. Malian state media had earlier said there were five bombers.
"We do not permit the establishment of barracks and bases or the convening of patrols and convoys belonging to the French occupiers, to wage war against the mujahideen," the statement read.
France intervened in Mali in 2013 to drive back Islamist groups that seized the desert north a year earlier and maintains a regional operation aimed at stamping out insurgents.
Al Mourabitoun, led by veteran jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, is believed to have carried out a number of high-profile attacks against military and civilian targets in Mali and other West African nations.
Together with AQIM and the Massina Liberation Front, it claimed an assault by jihadist gunmen on a Radisson hotel in the capital, Bamako, in November 2015 in which 20 people died.
