Mali’s president says existence of his country at risk after deadly jihadist attack

Mali's president has warned the very existence of his country is at risk after an attack by Islamic State militants killed at least 49 soldiers.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta has declared three days of mourning after the attack last Friday on an army base in Indelimane, in the northeast of the country.

Fighters overran the base, killed the troops and posed in videos afterwards with looted heavy weaponry and military vehicles.

“The stability and existence of our country are at stake, our only response must be national unity … around our national army,” Mr Keïta said on national television on Monday night.

The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) claimed the massacre and another IED explosion which killed a French soldier on Saturday.

While Islamic State (Isil) has been largely defeated in the Middle East, the group’s cousin in the Sahel, a vast arid region running underneath the Sahara, is going from strength to strength.

In recent weeks Mali has suffered repeated attacks on its military. Last month, jihadists allied to al-Qaeda killed at least 40 troops near the border with Burkina Faso.

Mali’s conflict began in late 2012 when jihadists and ethnic-Tuareg separatists, heavily armed with weapons from Libya’s civil war, surged out of the Sahara desert and took over the northern half of the country.

France, the former colonial power, intervened in early 2013. With the help of around 2,000 Chadian troops, French forces drove the fighters out of northern towns like Timbuktu.

The UN launched a mission with over 10,000 blue helmets and France has permanently stationed some 4,500 troops across the Sahel.

But international troops have not been able to stop the insecurity spreading. Jihadist groups and ethnic militias have proliferated and fighting has spread into Mali’s populous central regions and into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Many security analysts fear the violence could spread south into countries like Ivory Coast, Togo and Benin.

Both the UN and France are deeply unpopular among Malians who see them as incapable of protecting them.

In the address, Mr Keïta reaffirmed his support for the international forces saying that they were “more [necessary] than ever”.