The UN mission in Mali officially ended a 10-year deployment in the country on Monday, its spokesperson said.

The mission, known as MINUSMA, lowered the United Nations flag on its headquarters in the capital Bamako, its spokesperson Fatoumata Kaba said.

A symbolic ceremony marked the official end of the mission, she said, even though some of the elements of it are still there.

A “liquidation phase” will take place after 1st January, involving activities such as handing over remaining equipment to the authorities.

Mali’s ruling junta, which seized power in 2020, demanded in June the departure of the mission, deployed since 2013, despite being an ongoing jihadist crisis.

The withdrawal of the UN stabilisation mission, known as MINUSMA, has ignited fears that fighting will intensify between troops and armed factions for territorial control.

MINUSMA had maintained around 15,000 soldiers and police in Mali for the past decade. About 180 members have been killed in hostile acts.

As of Friday, more than 10,500 uniformed and civilian MINUSMA personnel had left Mali, out of a total of around 13,800 staff at the start of the withdrawal, the UN mission said on Twitter.

Since being told to leave, MINUSMA has so far left 13 positions in Mali, and has yet to close sites in Gao and Timbuktu in the north.

Last week, the UN mission handed over the Mopti camp in the centre of Mali, one of the hotbeds of jihadist violence that has plagued the Sahel region for years.

The pullout went smoothly, unlike recent withdrawals in Mali’s volatile north which took place under fears of a military escalation between the army and rebel groups, Kaba added.

Violence has swept the country while spilling over into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, inflaming ethnic tensions along the way.

After seizing power, Mali’s junta ditched the country’s alliance with former colonial power France, preferring rapprochement with Moscow.