Two armed men, including one who wielded a knife, attacked Mali's interim President Assimi Goita on Tuesday in the Grand Mosque of Bamako in the country's capital, said an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist who was at the scene.

The attack took place during prayers for the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha.

Goita has since been taken from the scene, according to the journalist, who said it was not immediately clear whether he had been wounded.

Religious Affairs Minister Mamadou Kone told AFP that a man had "tried to kill the president with a knife" but was apprehended.

Latus Toure, the director of the mosque, said an attacker had lunged for the president but wounded someone else.

AFP was not immediately able to confirm the accounts.

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

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

The conflict has also been mirrored by political instability in the capital.

Col. Goita led a coup last August, ousting elected President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita after weeks of mass protests over corruption and the long-running extremist conflict.

In May, he ousted a transitional government that had been entrusted with the task of leading the country back to civilian rule in February 2022.

He was then named transitional president, but has pledged to keep to the goal of returning to civilian government.