The attack occurred on Thursday afternoon between Dinangourou and Mondoro, the army said on Twitter.

"On the enemy's side, around a dozen terrorists were killed," but the army suffered no losses, it said.

Mali has been struggling to contain a jihadist insurgency that first emerged in the north of the country in 2012, and has since spread to the centre of the country and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed in the fighting to date, and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes.

From 2015, violence on civilians moved to the volatile centre of the country, starting with the Fulani community, which had become associated with the jihadists after a firebrand Fulani preacher named Amadou Koufa set up an armed group.

Last week, an exhaustive report into strife-torn Mali by UN investigators said they had garnered evidence of war crimes committed by the security forces and others, and of crimes against humanity by jihadists and other armed groups.

The 338-page investigation by the International Commission of Inquiry for Mali covers six years, from 2012 to 2018.