Gunmen attack UN base in Mali

Adebayo Onanuga

November 28, 2015

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Peacekeepers stand guard at the entrance to the Minusma peacekeeping base in Kidal, Mali, July 22, 2015. REUTERS Photo

Unidentified gunmen have attacked a UN peacekeepers’ base in northern Mali, with mortar fire heard at the scene, Reuters reports citing a witness.

It comes just over a week after an assault on a luxurious hotel left 20 people dead, many of them foreign citizens.

“The attack happened at around 4 a.m. (0400 GMT). Four or five rockets landed inside the base. Quite a few people were wounded but it’s too early for a precise number,” Olivier Salgado, spokesman for the UN forces in Mali, told Reuters.

In later report, the AFP said three persons were killed in the attack, two of them soldiers, and one a civilian.

The AFP also reported that the jihadist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack was “in response to the violation of our lands by the enemies of Islam,” one of the group’s senior figures, Hamadou Ag Khallini, told AFP by phone.