The International Committee of the Red Cross was sent to help evacuate civilians and military families, but despite the approval of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), Malian authorities delayed the operation and it was never executed as a humanitarian source.

Other Malian military forces in the region of Tessalit were led by Colonels' Didier Dacko, Ould Meydou, and the well respected Tuareg commander El Hadji Ag Gamou.

After several hours of fighting, Malian forces fled, leaving 17 dead and 14 prisoners, including their commander Yusuf Ag Bougara, along with six vehicles destroyed and four captured.

[7][8][9][10] On 2 March, the MNLA announced that a total of 32 Malian soldiers have been killed, 20 wounded, and three vehicles destroyed in clashes over the past two weeks, leaving only seven dead and seven taken as prisoners in their ranks.

The attack was eventually repulsed after twelve hours of fighting, but a helicopter was able to reach the Amachach military base to help collect the dead and wounded soldiers, with some bodies already in a state of decomposing.

[12] On 8 March, according to local sources in the town of In-Khalil, eight MNLA combatants died of the wounds they received in clashes with the army, with a ninth being taken to an Algerian hospital in Bordj Badji Mokhtar.

Fighting continued until 11 March, when the Malian army fled their military base, leaving behind hundreds of weapons, mortars, rocket launchers, machine guns, and even tanks.

The Malian army talked that their forces made a strategic withdrawal and evacuation of the Amachach military camp to shelter to civilians who had sought refuge and to prevent a massacre.