Mali government spokesperson Abdoulaye Maiga said in a statement televised on July 11, 2022 that two airplanes carrying 49 Ivorian soldiers, arrived at Mali’s international airport on July 10, 2022 with “their weapons and ammunition of war, as well as other military equipment”, Radio France Internationale reports.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA, said it believed that the troops were part of a unit that provided routine logistical support to the DR Congo military contingent.

But the Mali government said the soldiers, who are being held at a gendarmerie school in the capital city Bamako, provided varying reasons for their presence in the country – including that they were carrying out a “confidential mission and that they were “protecting Germany’s MINUSMA contingent”.

The Cote d’Ivoire government has contested Mali’s claims, Deutsche Welle reports.