Mali’s military says 82 soldiers captured by armed groups in the country’s north have been released and placed under government care.
The army announced the release on Thursday, saying the soldiers had been held hostage by al-Qaeda-linked fighters and Tuareg separatist rebels following a series of attacks in April.
The Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) separately said it had released around 80 Malian soldiers captured between 2023 and 2026. The group said the release was carried out for “strictly humanitarian” reasons and claimed that some of the soldiers had been held captive since 2023.
An official from Mali’s Foreign Ministry told AFP that Algeria mediated the release.
The FLA said about 118 other soldiers remain in captivity.
Mali has faced armed conflict since 2012, when a Tuareg separatist rebellion in the north was followed by the expansion of armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL.
The country has been under military rule since a 2021 coup. In recent years, the military government has expelled French forces and UN peacekeepers while seeking security assistance from Russian paramilitary personnel.
Although the FLA is a secular nationalist movement seeking independence for the Azawad region and JNIM is affiliated with al-Qaeda, the two groups have set aside their ideological differences to fight the Malian government.
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