Jihadists burn vehicles near Bamako as Mali fuel blockade tightens
Jihadists burned dozens of vehicles 45 km west of Bamako as Mali’s fuel blockade deepened, tightening pressure on a capital already short of diesel and gasoline.
Flames on a road about 45 kilometres west of Bamako marked the latest escalation in a campaign to choke Mali’s capital by cutting off fuel. Dozens of vehicles, including fuel tankers, minibuses and trucks, were set on fire near the city, with no reported casualties after those aboard were ordered out before the vehicles were torched.
The attacks fit a strategy designed to turn fuel into leverage in a landlocked country that depends heavily on imports from neighbouring states. Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, the al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group known as JNIM, imposed a fuel blockade on Bamako last year and tightened it after attacking the city last month. Since then, militants have burnt more than 100 fuel trucks on major highways across Mali and kidnapped drivers, even as some convoys have still reached the capital under military escort.
The latest burnings were verified through roadside buildings, satellite imagery and NASA FIRMS heat-signature data, underscoring how far the blockade has spread beyond isolated ambushes. In September 2025, a JNIM attack on a convoy of more than 100 vehicles under military escort destroyed at least 40 fuel tankers, a blow that helped deepen shortages in Bamako and exposed the state’s limited control over main supply routes.
The economic effects have been immediate. Fuel shortages forced some stations in Bamako to close or sell only diesel, while Prime Minister Abdoulaye Maiga convened a disaster management committee to secure convoy supply. Later, Malian authorities announced that a convoy of fuel tankers had arrived from Ivory Coast, briefly easing shortages. In October 2025, fuel in Bamako was being rationed at 10,000 CFA francs, about $17.75, for roughly 13 litres of gasoline, while black-market prices were about three times higher than at the pump.
The blockade is also a political message to Mali’s military rulers. Gen Assimi Goïta, who seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021 and promised to restore security, appointed Brig Gen Famouké Camara in January to lead a special operation against the blockade. The pressure has not let up. Much of northern and eastern Mali remains effectively ungovernable, and last month ethnic Tuareg separatists and JNIM launched coordinated attacks across the country, deepening the sense that the state is losing ground even in areas close to the capital.
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