The US army has confirmed the presence of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group in Mali, which the African nation’s government has denied amid increasingly strained relations with the West.

“Wagner is in Mali,” General Stephen Townsend, the head of US Africa Command, said in an interview with Voice of America, “They are there, we think, numbering several hundred now.”

“They’re deploying there, supported by the Russian military, Russian Air Force airplanes are delivering them,” he said, directly tying the Wagner group to the Kremlin, a link that Moscow denies.

“The world can see this happening,” Townsend said. “It’s a great concern to us.”

French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian last week accused Wagner’s mercenaries of “supporting” Mali’s ruling junta under the pretense of fighting jihadists. He also slammed Russia for allegedly lying about the status of the Wagner group.

“When we asked our Russian colleagues about Wagner, they said they don’t know anything (about it),” he said.