Tuareg guerillas in Mali, accompanied by Tuareg fighters from neighboring Niger, attacked a northeast police post May 11, the first attack since a peace deal with the government last year. The assault against the gendarmerie post at Tin-Za, north of the town of Kidal and just two miles from the Algerian border, was led by Ibrahim Bahanga, a well-known Tuareg guerilla leader, anonymous sources told Reuters. There were no immediate details of casualties, but Mali's army sent reinforcements from the Saharan trading town of Kidal, located in the heartland of the Tuareg insrgency of the 1990s.

Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure signed a July 4 peace deal with the Tuareg rebels in Algiers last year. But Tuaregs in both Mali and Niger acuse the government of not recognizing the accords calling for greater regional autonomy. Last month, Tuaregs in Niger attacked a French-run uranium mine in the north of that country, killing a soldier. (Reuters, May 11)

See our last posts on the Tuareg and the Sahel crisis.