Violence once again mourns the mali. A 12-year-old child was killed in the center of the country in a “terrorist attack with heavy weapons” against a transport boat on the Niger River, the shipping company and a police source said on Saturday.
The assault was carried out “with heavy weapons (rockets)” by “armed groups terrorists “Friday evening in the Youwarou area, in the Mopti region, against a boat from the Malian River Navigation Company (Comanaf, public), according to a press release from the latter. The ship was coming from Mopti, the eponymous regional capital, and was destined for the locality of Kabara, in the region of Timbuktu (north), on the Niger River.
The UN force on the way out
A passenger, a “12-year-old teenager”, was killed and two other people including a member of the crew injured in this attack which caused “significant damage” to the ship, according to Comanaf. The information was confirmed by a police source who spoke of an attack carried out by “terrorists”.
Since 2012, Mali has been in the grip of a deep security crisis that started in the north and which has spread to the center of the country as well as to the Burkina Faso and at Niger neighbors. After overthrowing President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta on August 18, 2020, the Malian junta, headed by Assimi Goïta, demanded the withdrawal of the French force Barkhane, effective since 2022, then demanded that of the peacekeeping mission of the United Nations (Minusma) by the end of the year.
The junta has made sovereignty its mantra, broken the alliance with France and its partners against jihadism, to turn militarily and politically to Russia.