Bamako, Mali, April 2 – Four United Nations peacekeepers were killed early Friday when suspected jihadists attacked their camp in Aguelhok in northern Mali, the UN mission said.
The peacekeepers “bravely pushed back a complex attack carried out by several heavily-armed terrorists,” MINUSMA said in a statement, adding that four troops had died and others were wounded according to a provisional toll.
The statement said the attackers had suffered heavy losses and had abandoned “several of their dead.”
A source in MINUSMA said the attack occurred around 200 kilometres (120 miles) from the Algerian border, targeting a contingent of peacekeepers from Chad.
A Chadian military source said “two of our forces’ positions were attacked. We lost four people, including our forces’ detachment commander, and 16 were injured.”
The UN force’s statement called the attack another “attempt against the peace process” that will “in no way undermine its determination to continue the execution of its mandate.”
It thanked “international forces for their aerial support.”
At around the same time, two Malian soldiers were killed and six wounded in an attack blamed on jihadists in Diafarabe in the country’s centre, a military source said.
Mali has been struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency which first broke out in the north of the country in 2012 before spreading to the centre and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.
Thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.
France, the former colonial power, intervened in Mali in 2013 to beat back the jihadists, and now has some 5,100 soldiers deployed across the semi-arid Sahel region.
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