A peacekeeper and two children died on Sunday as militants shelled a UN base in northern Mali, heightening security fears as police hunted militants who launched a deadly Bamako nightclub assault.
The UN’s Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) said more than 30 rockets were fired at its barracks in the rebel stronghold of Kidal from 5:40am.
“Once they had established from where the rockets were being fired, MINUSMA troops immediately returned fire two kilometers from the compound, at around 6:00,” the force said in a statement.
Photo: AFP
“According to preliminary reports, one MINUSMA soldier died and eight others were injured. The shelling also claimed victims among the citizens of Kidal outside the compound, killing two and injuring four,” the statement said.
The force said in an update on Twitter that the civilian victims — members of the nomadic Arab Kunta tribe — were children and that only three had been wounded.
Their encampment near the UN base was hit by stray rockets as the attack got under way, a MINUSMA source said.
Sources in MINUSMA also said the peacekeeper, like the majority of personnel at the base, was Chadian.
The UN Security Council issued a statement condemning the “heinous” assault and warned that “those responsible for the attack shall be held accountable” while calling on the Malian government to investigate.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned the “intolerable” killings, calling them a “breach of international humanitarian law.”
“MINUSMA strongly condemns these heinous terrorist acts, whose only goal is to thwart all the efforts currently under way to achieve lasting peace in Mali,” the force said.
No group has claimed responsibility, although Kidal is the cradle of northern Mali’s Tuareg separatist movement, which has launched several uprisings from the region since the 1960s.
Tuareg and Arab militias — loyalist and anti-government — have forged a peace agreement with the Malian government formulated last week in Algiers, although the main rebel groups have yet to sign it.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other militant groups also carry out attacks in Kidal, including the 2013 murders of two French journalists.
In Bamako, police in bulletproof vests patrolled the area where a masked gunman early on Saturday had burst into La Terrasse, a popular venue among expatriates, spraying automatic gunfire and throwing grenades.
Al-Murabitoun, an extremist group run by leading Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, has claimed responsibility for that attack, which left a Frenchman, a Belgian and three Malians dead.
It said in an audio recording carried by Mauritanian news agency al-Akbar the operation was carried out “to avenge our prophet against the unbelieving West which has insulted and mocked him.”
“We cannot say much more at this stage but there are clues about the vehicle used to transport the author of the crimes committed in Bamako,” a police source said.
The French victim has been named as 30-year-old Fabien Guyomard, a single man with no children who had lived in Bamako since 2007 and worked at US construction company ICMS Africa.
Malian Prime Minister Modibo Keita and President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita visited eight people who were being treated in hospital, including two Swiss weapons experts advising the Malian government.
The pair — both soldiers — were later repatriated to Bern, the Swiss military said in Geneva.
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
RSS