A UN peacekeeper was killed and four others wounded on Saturday when a mine exploded as their convoy passed through central Mali, the UN mission in the country said.
The blast hit part of the Egyptian contingent of the UN force close to the Burkina Faso border, the UN stabilisation mission in Mali (MINUSMA) said. The peacekeeper killed was Egyptian.
One attacker was killed, according to a security source.
MINUSMA chief Mahamat Saleh Annadif called it a “cowardly attack.”
UN chief Antonio Guterres’s office issued a statement saying the UN peacekeepers “responded, killing an assailant and apprehending eight others”.
He urged Malian authorities “to take swift action to identify the perpetrators of this attack and bring them to justice.”
The UN mission was established in Mali after radical militias seized the north of the country in 2012. They were pushed back by French troops in 2013.
A peace agreement signed in 2015 by the Bamako government and armed groups was aimed at restoring stability. But the accord has failed to stop the violence.
Saturday’s attack came as President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita pursued consultations to pick a new prime minister – two days after the previous one, Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga, resigned with his entire cabinet, under fire from the ruling and opposition parties for failing to clamp down on the unrest.
Since their deployment in 2013, more than 190 peacekeepers have died in Mali, including nearly 120 killed by hostile action – making MINUSMA the UN’s deadliest peacekeeping operation, accounting for more than half of blue helmets killed globally in the past five years.
MINUSMA is considered one the most dangerous U.N. peacekeeping missions, and Saturday’s incident brings to 17 the number of blue helmets have died this year alone.
On January 25, two Sri Lankan blue helmets died and six were injured in after their vehicle hit a mine near Douentza. The previous day, a peacekeeper from Burkina Faso was injured in an IED on another convoy near Douentza.
The Mopti region has also seen a number of attacks on Malian forces and on the G5 Sahel Joint Force.
But attacks on peacekeepers are not confined to restive central Mali.
On January 20, gunmen killed 10 Chadian peacekeepers and injured at least 25 others in an attack on a U.N. camp in Aguelhok, around 120 km north of Kidal.
And on April 3, two peacekeepers were injured in a mortar and gun attack on a U.N. base in Kidal.
The recent unrest in the Sahel region began in Mali in 2012 with Tuareg separatist uprising against the state, which was exploited by Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda who took key cities in the desert north.
France began its Operation Serval military intervention in its former colony early the next year, driving the jihadists from the towns, but the militant groups morphed into more nimble formations operating in rural areas, sometimes winning over local populations by providing basic services and protection from bandits.
Large parts of Mali remain outside government control, and the insurgency has gradually spread to central and southern regions of the country and across the borders into neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.
A peace deal was signed in 2015 between the government and some armed groups designed to isolate the militant Islamists, but the jihadist insurgency has shown no signs of weakening.
The French mission in Mali evolved in August 2014 into the current Operation Barkhane, which has 4,500 personnel deployed with a mandate for counter-terrorism operations across the Sahel region, with 2,700 soldiers in Mali to support poorly-equipped local military forces.
Troops deployed to Barkhane work alongside the U.N. MINUSMA stabilization mission in Mali, which began in 2013 and has about 12,000 troops and 1,750 police deployed, as well as the G5 Sahel joint counter-terrorism force that aims to train and deploy up to 5,000 personnel.
