Mali’s government refuses to talk to ‘terrorist’ armed groups, the foreign minister has said, days after jihadists and allied separatists mounted unprecdented attacks against the junta.

The coordinated deadly offensive by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists and Tuareg separatists on April 25 and 26 targeted strategic towns and killed the country’s influential defence minister.

‘The government of Mali does not envisage any dialogue with the lawless terrorist armed groups that bear responsibility for the tragic events our people have been experiencing for years,’ foreign minister Abdoulaye Diop said, meeting the country’s diplomats on Thursday.

The junta-led west African country has grappled with more than a decade of violence and last month’s attacks were reminiscent of a crisis that rocked Mali in 2012.

Under a new alliance forged a year ago, Tuareg rebels of the Azawad Liberation Front teamed up with the al-Qaeda-linked jihadist Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims to launch the latest assaults.

‘The FLA has freely chosen to take up the cause of an extremist group recognised as terrorist by the United Nations,’ the minister said, referring to the JNIM.

The key town of Kidal and other towns and villages in the north were captured and are now controlled by the FLA and the jihadists, who have since imposed a blockade on the capital, Bamako.

On Wednesday, security, legal and family sources said that several opposition figures and military personnel had been detained or abducted following the attacks.

Verification of the number and identity of those involved is difficult.

Since 2012, Mali has faced a deep security crisis fuelled in particular by violence from fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, as well as local criminal gangs and pro-independence groups.

The unrest fed a political crisis, leading to two military coups in 2020 and 2021.