The Malian army says it has entered the strategic northern city of Kidal, which was captured around five months ago by Tuareg separatists who announced their withdrawal earlier Tuesday as the military advanced.
In late April, jihadists from Al-Qaeda-linked JNIM and its Tuareg separatist allies kicked off a series of attacks aimed at weakening Mali's junta rulers, including taking control of Kidal and killing the defence minister.
The Tuareg separatist Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) said in a statement earlier in the day it had "decided to carry out a strategic and controlled withdrawal of its forces from the city of Kidal".
The announcement came just as Mali's armed forces announced "large-scale air-ground operations" with its paramilitary allies from Russia's Africa Corps in the larger Kidal region.
By mid-afternoon, two Malian officers confirmed to AFP that the armed forces had arrived in the city.
A convoy left the town of Anefis Tuesday morning and "entered Kidal shortly before 1:00 pm (local and GMT). We encountered no resistance", one of the officers said.
The other reported that the armed forces had "arrived in Kidal ahead of schedule".
An officer in Gao who spoke on condition of anonymity additionally said that troops had been moving in the Kidal region over "the past few days" with an aim of securing "the Malian population and Kidal, and to fight against terrorism".
In its statement, the FLA said that it left Kidal "due to the disproportionate use of aerial assets by Russian mercenaries from Africa Corps and the terrorist forces of the Bamako military junta" in order to "preserve human lives".
The FLA emphasised that the measures were "temporary" and were "intended to keep its human and logistical capabilities intact".
A man who left Kidal Monday with six family members told AFP they were the last to depart the city, where there had not been "even a hundred civilians left" for some time.
- Pivot to Russia -
Mali has been wracked since 2012 by a serious security crisis, notably fuelled by violence from jihadists allied to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group, along with criminal gangs and armed separatists.
Its ruling junta, which came to power in two successive coups in 2020 and 2021, has turned away from former colonial power France and moved closer to Russia, both militarily and politically.
In order to fight jihadists, it turned first to Russia's mercenary Wagner Group, which was replaced in June 2025 by Africa Corps, which falls under the direct control of the Russian defence ministry.
The violence since April as JNIM and the FLA battle the Malian army and its Russian allies, has included a number of deadly assaults.
A large-scale jihadist attack on the Dioura military camp in central Mali in September killed at least 100 Malian soldiers.
In mid-July, at least 50 other soldiers lost their lives in northern Mali when a coalition of Tuareg separatists and jihadists ambushed an army convoy leaving the strategic town of Anefis and heading for the city of Gao.
Human rights organisations have repeatedly accused the Malian army and Russian paramilitaries of killing civilians during operations, and all sides of committing war crimes.
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