15:07 27/06/2015
Bamako - Gunmen attacked a town in western Mali near the border
with neighbouring Mauritania before dawn on Saturday, a town resident
and a senior military source said.
It was not immediately clear
who was behind the attack, which took place a week after a Tuareg-led
northern rebel alliance signed a peace deal with the government aimed at
ending their uprising and allowing the authorities to focus on
combatting Islamist militants.
Gunfire erupted at around 05:00 in the town of Nara, around 30km south of border with Mauritania.
"There
was an exchange of gunfire with the [Malian army]. The attack was
repelled. The army is patrolling in the town to look for them," army
spokesperson Colonel Souleymane Maiga said.
There was no immediate information on casualties, he added.
A resident said that gunfire was still being heard several hours after the clashes began.
"We
are in our houses. No one is going out. All the houses are closed up.
The fighting is going on now," one town resident said, asking not to be
named.
A French-led military campaign in early 2013 liberated
northern Mali from al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels, who seized control
of the area after the Tuareg uprising led to a military coup that
plunged Mali into chaos.
Insecurity persists however, and though
the violence, often blamed on the remnants of Islamist groups, is
generally focused in the desert north, attacks have in recent months
crept further south.
Dozens of suspected Islamist militants attacked a police base near Mali's southern border with Ivory Coast earlier this month.
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