Dozens of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries reportedly killed in Mali

Tuareg rebels in northern Mali have said that they were responsible for killing dozens of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries fighting for the Malian government in recent days, Reuters reported on Sunday.

A spokesperson for the predominantly Tuareg Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security, and Development, a coalition of military and political movements in Northern Mali, said in a statement on Saturday that pro-independence rebels had ambushed and destroyed an “entire column of Malian army and Russian mercenaries” in battles around the town of Tinzaouaten on Mali’s border with Algeria on Thursday and Friday, AP reported.

The attack resulted in “huge losses in terms of lives and equipment” and “dozens of dead and wounded” among the Malian military forces and Wagner troops, the statement continued.

The Malian military claimed on Friday that it had killed around 20 rebels in the clashes and lost two of its own troops in the attack.

While neither the Kremlin nor the Wagner Group has yet commented on the reports, Russian sources offered varying estimated death tolls from the fighting. The Kremlin-affiliated Baza Telegram channel published images appearing to show rebel gunmen standing over the bodies of dead and wounded Malian and Russian fighters, saying that at least 20 Wagner mercenaries had been killed.

The neo-Nazi Rusich paramilitary group, meanwhile, said that at least 80 Wagner troops had been killed and over 15 more had been taken prisoner by the Tuareg forces.

Russian pro-war Telegram channels reported that one of the Wagner mercenaries killed was 31-year-old Nikita Fedyanin, who reported on the Wagner Group’s activities in Africa on his Grey Zone Telegram channel, which has over 500,000 subscribers.

On the channel, which he styled as a "mercenary community", Fedyanin posted images from Wagner operations in various locations across Africa, as well as expressing support for Russia's war in Ukraine.

The Wagner Group has been operating in countries across Africa since 2017, with its forces arriving in Mali at the request of the Malian government in late 2021 to provide additional security amid the ongoing civil war in the country. Since then, Wagner forces in the West African country have been accused of committing multiple human rights violations, including carrying out summary executions and drone strikes on civilian populations.