{{Fifty Malian soldiers died this week during a failed army attempt to seize the Tuareg separatist northern town of Kidal, the West African country’s defense minister said on Sunday.}}<\/p>\n
The fresh fighting on Wednesday, the worst since the government and separatist groups signed a preliminary peace agreement last year, threatened to sink struggling peace talks to end a long cycle of Tuareg uprisings.<\/p>\n
“In terms of toll, we have recorded 50 deaths unfortunately,” Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga said on Malian state television, adding that 40 others were wounded in the failed operation.<\/p>\n
Maiga had previously said that 20 soldiers were killed in the combat and 30 were wounded.<\/p>\n
The Malian army launched the assault on Kidal after clashes broke out last weekend during a visit to the town by new Prime Minister Moussa Mara.<\/p>\n
The Tuareg separatist and the government agreed to a deal brokered by the African Union and the United Nations on Friday to permanently cease fire, exchange prisoners, restart peace talks and accept an international investigation into Wednesday fighting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Fifty Malian soldiers died this week during a failed army attempt to seize the Tuareg separatist northern town of Kidal, the West African country’s defense minister said on Sunday.}} The fresh fighting on Wednesday, the worst since the government and separatist groups signed a preliminary peace agreement last year, threatened to sink struggling peace talks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000052365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-14623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000052365,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14623.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14623.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14623.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14623.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14623.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14623.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000052365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14623"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=14623"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=14623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}