The videos from Mali’s capital in September were starkly at odds with the assurances Russia’s Wagner group mercenaries had given the country’s ruling junta about improving security.

After Bamako’s residents were woken by gunfire at the airport and a gendarmerie academy, al-Qaeda propaganda showed gunmen setting fire to an aircraft and attacking a passenger terminal.

As many as 100 people died in the Sept 17 attacks, mostly young police recruits, when the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) seemed to easily penetrate two of the country’s most secure sites.

The jihadist attacks were an embarrassment for the junta, which took power partly because of public frustration at the former government’s feeble attempts to deal with a decade of Islamist insurgent violence.

But they were also a humiliation for its security partner, Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, which had supplanted France and the United Nations in Mali by promising to bring safety where they had failed.