"Unidentified armed individuals" attacked the station on Thursday night, the Malian police said in a statement published on social networks.

"After several exchanges of gunfire, the attackers were defeated", the statement said, adding that police, soldiers and gendarmes had worked together to fight the attack.

There has been a series of at least ten unsolved beheadings in Fana between 2018 and 2021, the city's public prosecutor said.

Fana, like much of southern Mali, has remained largely unscathed by the jihadist and inter-community violence that have for years raged in the north and centre of the country.