The assailants on Monday stormed a military post southwest of the town of Ansongo, near the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger, the army said in a statement on social media.

"After heavy fighting, the toll was two dead and eight wounded" among the troops, it said.

Mali was plunged into conflict in 2012 when local Tuareg radicals, supported by jihadists, revolted in the north of the country.

France intervened militarily to crush the rebellion, but the jihadists scattered and regrouped, taking their campaign into central Mali in 2015 and then into neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.

In Mali alone, thousands of civilians and troops have died and hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes.

The so-called three-border zone was the scene of a military offensive from early last year by the French Barkhane force and its regional allies, especially against the jihadist Islamic State in the Greater Sahara group (EIGS).