BAMAKO - Mali's northern Tuareg rebels said they had killed and injured dozens of soldiers and Wagner mercenaries in two days of fighting near the Algerian border, after the army said it had lost two soldiers but killed some 20 rebels.

The rebel movement, the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD), said in a statement it had seized armoured vehicles, trucks and tankers in the fighting at the border town of Tinzaouaten on Thursday and Friday.

It has also damaged a helicopter, which crashed in the town of Kidal, hundreds of kilometres away, the rebel group said on Saturday.

The Malian army said in statements that two soldiers had been killed and 10 injured. One of its helicopters had crashed in Kidal on Friday while on a routine mission but no one was killed, it said.

The Tuareg are an ethnic group who inhabit the Sahara region, including parts of northern Mali. Many of them feel marginalised by the Malian government.

The separatist group launched an insurgency against Mali's junta government in 2012 but the rebellion was later hijacked by Islamist groups.

It signed a peace agreement with Bamako in 2015, but CSP-PSD pulled out of the talks at the end of 2022.

  - Reuters