No fewer than 3 United Nations peacekeepers were seriously wounded in a rocket attack on a military base in northern Mali, UN, and local officials said.
A spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission in the West African country, Olivier Salgado, said Sunday’s attack occured on a base in Tessalit, which houses Malian soldiers, UN peacekeepers and French troops, AFP news agency reported.
Three peacekeepers were ‘gravely wounded‘ in the attack, he added.
A Tessalit tribal leader, who declined to be named, told journalists that the camp had come under rocket fire.
‘The situation is currently calm and under control,’ he said.
Read Also: Malian Post-Coup Govt Reveals Election Date
Recall that Mali has been battling a brutal uprising since 2012, when rebel fighters first emerged during a rebellion by ethnic Tuareg separatists in the north.
France intervened to crush the rebellion, but the fighters scattered and regrouped, taking their campaign into central Mali in 2015 and then into neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.
First established in 2013, the 13,000-strong MINUSMA has suffered one of the highest death tolls of any mission in UN peacekeeping history.
More than 130 of its personnel have been killed as a result of hostile acts, including six this year, according to UN statistics, out of a total of around 230 deaths since the mission began.
In March, some 100 heavily armed fighters on pick-up trucks and motorbikes attacked a military post in Tessit, killing at least 33 soldiers. The army said it killed 20 of the attackers.
Nine soldiers were killed and nine others wounded in an attack in February near the central town of Bandiagara.
Rebel attacks in central Mali typically involve roadside bombs or hit-and-run raids on motorbikes or pick-up trucks.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK