DAKAR: Along Mali’s National Route 6, a major thoroughfare connecting the capital to the country’s center, the army has reshaped the landscape: the vegetation from the surrounding forest has been cleared in anticipation of militant ambushes.
Armed groups use forest areas both as refuge and a base for launching deadly attacks on roads across Africa’s Sahel region.
In Mali, militants from JNIM, Al-Qaeda’s Sahel branch, operate from the vast 80,000-hectare (200,000-acre) Faya forest, located a quick drive from the capital, Bamako, from which they carry out attacks against toll stations, public transportation and freight trucks.
Since June, Faya has become an “off-limits military zone to civilians,” along with 38 other parks and forests that are “likely to serve as refuges for armed terrorist groups,” according to an interministerial decree.
The armed forces, it said, would eliminate “all targets located in the specified zones.”
