Mali holds tribute for assassinated defence minister

Mali held a tribute under tight security for assassinated defence minister Sadio Camara on Thursday, following large-scale attacks at the weekend by jihadists and their Tuareg separatist allies that have destabilised the country's junta.

Thousands of people, including junta leader Assimi Goita, attended the ceremony at the military engineering battalion grounds in the centre of the capital, Bamako.

Numerous armed soldiers were present, AFP journalists observed, with checkpoints and barricades blocking roads and security forces strictly controlling access.

Camara was one of the junta's top officials and was considered the architect of Mali's rapprochement with Russia in recent years.

The 47-year-old minister died as a result of a car bomb on Saturday at his residence in Kati, a garrison town near Bamako that is home to several senior junta officials.

The government declared two days of national mourning following his death.

Among the throngs attending Thursday's ceremony were Camara's friends and family, as well as officials from Mali and abroad, including the defence ministers of neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.

Mali's ruling junta and its military counterparts in Niger and Burkina have severed ties with former colonial ruler France, moving closer politically and militarily to Moscow and banding together in the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

Tuareg rebels with the FLA ride on the back of a pickup truck in Kidal on April 26, 2026. By - (AFP/File)

Dressed in combat fatigues, Goita paid tribute to Camara by bowing before his coffin, which was draped in Mali's green, yellow and red flag with his military cap on top.

Prime Minister Abdoulaye Maiga declared that Camara had "helped define Mali's defence priorities. He represented unwavering loyalty to the public interest".

"You fell a martyr, you died a hero", he added.

Family spokesman Bakary Camara meanwhile paid tribute to "a devoted father, husband and son".

A military parade followed the tributes, with a funeral to take place later in the day.

Difficult position

The weekend attacks have generated a security crisis in the vast Sahel country and have so far resulted in the deaths of at least 23 people.

Kati was one of a number of strategic junta positions that were attacked by the militants from the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and separatists from the Tuareg-dominated Azawad Liberation Front (FLA).

A column of black smoke rises above buildings in Bamako on April 26, 2026. By - (AFP/File)

The country's junta finds itself in a difficult position after the militants took the strategic northern city of Kidal and appear to be continuing their advance in the north.

The attacks cast doubt on the junta's ability to confront the threats posed by armed groups and undermine its rhetoric that it had the situation under control.

On Wednesday a spokesman for the FLA declared that the junta "will fall" and that the group intended to conquer the country's north.

Moscow, for its part, affirmed on Thursday that its forces would remain in Mali, thus rejecting the rebels' call for a Russian withdrawal from the country.

The recent attacks escalate the profound security crisis Mali has faced since 2012, fuelled in particular by violence from groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as local criminal gangs and pro-independence groups.