Fifteen German UN peacekeepers present in Mali were injured this Friday morning, victims of a car bomb attack. “Twelve are seriously affected,” said a member of the defense committee of the German parliament on condition of anonymity.
Three of the 12 German peacekeepers affected are seriously injured, said German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Two of them are in stable condition while the third has been operated on, she said in Bonn, Germany. All the injured were evacuated from the area by helicopter, she said. A plane is expected overnight in Gao, the nearby large city, to take the most seriously injured on Saturday morning, she added.
A Belgian soldier was also injured, the Belgian Defense Ministry said in a statement. He received first aid on site before being transported to a hospital. “This morning, a temporary operational base of the Minusma Force near the village of Ichagara, in the commune of Tarkint, region of Gao, was the target of a vehicle bomb attack,” said the Mission of Nations. United (Minusma) on social networks, specifying that the evacuation of the wounded was underway, but without providing further details at first on the circumstances of the operation.
Six French soldiers wounded on Monday
Minusma had established a temporary base there since Thursday, the time to secure a towing operation of a mission vehicle, said an international security source. The vehicle to be towed had been damaged by the explosion of a homemade explosive device. The machine had exploded when a convoy of Minusma passed by, escorting the deployment of a so-called “reconstituted” battalion of the Malian army, that is to say integrating former rebels who fought the regular forces in the north before the signing of a peace agreement in 2015.
On Monday, six soldiers of the French anti-jihadist force Barkhane and four civilians were injured when a car packed with explosives detonated near a French armored vehicle in the vicinity of Gossi (center).
Regularly targeted Minusma
Since 2012 and the outbreak of independence and jihadist rebellions in the North, Mali has been plunged into a multifaceted turmoil that has left thousands dead, civilians and combatants, despite the support of the international community and the intervention of forces from the UN, African and French.
The separatists signed a peace agreement in 2015. Since then, Mali has remained plagued by the actions of groups linked to Al-Qaida and the Islamic State organization, intercommunal violence and trafficking of all kinds. The violence has spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. Minusma is regularly the target of attacks, like the Malian and French forces. It is the deadliest UN mission in the world.