Mali seizes inflatable cars it says armed groups planned using as decoys

The Malian army said it has seized 20 inflatable vehicles it said were intended for use by armed groups operating in the country.

The country's military released footage showing the inflatable cars, some resembling Land Cruisers, a popular make of pickup truck across Africa.

Malian state television reported that armed groups operating in the country planned to use them as decoys to trick drones into wasting expensive missiles by firing at them.

Rida Lyammouri, a Sahel expert at the Moroccan think tank, the Policy Center for the New South, said the inflatable vehicles are a good alternative for armed groups.

"They cost about probably like $1,300 and compared to the cost of a real vehicle or even the human loss or the damage that the drones could cause, this is relatively cheap for them,” he said.

He said using the fake cars as decoys was one way these groups could slow down the use of drones against them, in both Mali and Burkina Faso.

The Malian military said that, due to the ongoing investigation, it would not disclose the date the shipment was seized or the location.

But Lyammouri says there are several possible groups who may be involved.

“We can think of JNIM [an al-Qaeda offshoot] as well as the FLA [Azawad Liberation Front, a Tuareg separatist group] because both are being heavily targeted by drones in recent years,” he said.

An FLA official told the Associated Press news agency it has been using inflatable cars as decoys since last November in the Kidal region and claimed that they have been targeted three times by Malian army drones.