Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma who tweeted in reference to the Friday attack that left 26 dead among them three Kenyans said the attack is yet another reminder that much should be done to degrade the capacity of terrorist groups/MFA
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 3 – Kenya has condemned the Friday terror attack on a Mali military post in the northeast of the country, that left 54 soldiers dead.
Of the dead, includes a French soldier, while 20 others survived with injuries-in an attack claimed by the Islamic State.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma termed the incident as a heinous and cowardly attack on humanity.
In a statement posted on her social media platforms on Sunday morning, CS Juma said Kenya stands with Mali, during this trying moment.
“I condole with my colleague & brother Hon. Tiébilé Dramé, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mali & through him the people of Mali following Friday’s terrorist attack in Menaka region that has left 54 people dead. We condemn this heinous and cowardly attack on humanity. Kenya stands with you during this trying moment,” reads the statement.
The assault is one of the deadliest strikes against Mali’s military in recent Islamist militant violence.
It comes a month after two jihadist assaults killed 40 soldiers near the border with Burkina Faso, however, several sources said the death toll had been downplayed, Agence France Presse reported on Saturday.
The deadly assault sparked protests outside a military camp in the country’s capital Bamako.
Mali’s army has been struggling in the face of a jihadist revolt that has spread from the arid north to its centre, an ethnically mixed and volatile region.
The recent assaults are also a humiliation for the so-called G5 Sahel force a much-trumpeted initiative under which five countries created a joint 5,000-man anti-terror force and for France, which is committed to shoring up the fragile region.
Northern Mali came under the control of Al-Qaeda linked jihadists after Mali’s army failed to quash a rebellion there in 2012.
A French-led military campaign was launched against the jihadists, pushing them back a year later.
But the jihadists have regrouped and widened their hit-and-run raids and landmine attacks to central and southern Mali.
The violence has also spilled over into Burkina Faso and Niger where militants have exploited existing inter-communal strife, leaving hundreds dead.
Kenya forces have suffered a similar fate, though in Somalia, when Al-Shabaab militants overrun a military camp in El-Adde in January 2016, killing more than a hundred soldiers.
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