At least 3 were killed and 20 hurt Saturday after a rocket attack took place at a United Nations base in northern Mali.
Advertisement
“They fired rockets from around 4am inside the MINUSMA camp”, the United Nations peacekeeping mission’s Deputy Chief of Communication Olivier Salgado told Reuters in an interview.
A number of people have been wounded in the incident.
Three organizations – Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, its splinter group Al-Mourabitoun and Massina Liberation Front – claimed responsibility for that hotel attack that killed Russian and Chinese nationals as well as an American, among others.
28 condemned a deadly attack on United Nations peacekeepers in north Mali earlier in the day, stressing “the urgent need to bring the perpetrators of this attack to justice”.
Ag Hamadou Khallini, a senior Ansar-ud Din figure, spoke to several local radio stations taking responsibility for the attack.
Armed men held around 170 guests and staff hostage in the November 20 siege that lasted about nine hours before Malian and worldwide forces stormed the hotel to free the captives.
The Security Council “expressed their deepest condolences and sympathy” to the families of the victims, to the government of Guinea and Burkina Faso, respectively, as well as to the government of Mali, said the statement.
The Minusma force comprises some 10,000 soldiers from dozens of different contributor countries – the majority from Mali’s west African neighbours.
Northern Mali was occupied by fighters, some with links to al-Qaeda, for most of 2012.
Security analysts said the groups could be collaborating. However, violence has continued since then and has also spread into the safe areas too in the South.
Advertisement
Neighbouring countries are also battling extremist insurgencies, with the Isis-affiliated Boko Haram extending its bloody campaign from Nigeria to Niger, Cameroon and Chad.
