A suicide bomber in a vehicle painted in UN colors on Friday attacked the Malian headquarters of the G5 Sahel international anti-terrorism task force, killing two soldiers and a civilian, a security source and a local leader said.
The building’s entrance wall was destroyed, with the force of the blast throwing the vehicle inside it, according to witnesses and pictures of the scene.
The al-Qaeda-linked Support Group for Islam and Muslims, the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel region, claimed the attack in a telephone call to Mauritanian news agency al-Akhbar.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned “the complex attack perpetrated against the G5-Sahel Joint Force’s Headquarters,” his spokesman said in a statement.
It was the first attack on the headquarters of the five-nation force set up with the backing of France last year to roll back jihadist insurgents and criminal groups in the vast, unstable region.
“Shortly after Friday prayers, a suicide bomber in a vehicle painted with UN colors blew up at the entrance to the G5 base in Sevare. It was a huge blast,” a military source in the G5 Sahel force told reporters.
Two soldiers from the force and a civilian were killed, as well as two attackers, said a source within the force and the governor of Mopti, the regional capital.
The Malian government later said that the two soldiers killed were members of its armed forces.
A previous toll of six people killed was revised down.
Mopti Governor Sidi Alassane Toure said there had been “confusion” in the morgue.
“We have arrested four suspects,” he said, adding that search operations would take all night.
Guterres, who visited the Sevare headquarters last month, highlighted security shortcomings on several of the forces’ sites in Mali in a report published in May.
“Poor conditions on and around the site represent an important security threat, and are delaying the deployment of the remaining soldiers,” the report said.
Residents in Sevare, 600km northeast of the capital, Bamako, hid inside their homes during Friday’s attack, said Bouba Bathily, a trader who sheltered from the gunfire in his house.
“There was a huge blast” followed by shooting that lasted more than an hour, orange seller Haoussa Haidara said.
The attack came three days before a meeting in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, between French President Emmanuel Macron and the heads of the G5 Sahel states to discuss progress made by the forces.
The G5 Sahel force aims to have a total of 5,000 troops from five nations — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — but has faced funding problems.
It operates alongside France’s 4,000 troops in the troubled “triborder” area where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet, and alongside the UN’s 12,000-strong Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali.
French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly on Twitter condemned the “cowardly attack.”
“Solidarity with our African partners with whom we will continue the fight against terrorism,” she wrote.
The G5 Sahel was scheduled to be fully mobilized by the middle of this year, but its deployment has faced delays, equipment worries and accusations of human rights abuses.
On Tuesday, the UN said that Malian soldiers within the force “summarily” executed 12 civilians in a market in central Mali in May in retaliation for the death of a soldier.
Malian Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga said that the government had “taken the necessary measures” after the bloodshed, which he condemned.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion