According to police and local authorities, an explosion in central Mali on Thursday claimed the lives of at least eleven passengers on a bus.
Early in the afternoon, a bomb between Bandiagara and Goundaka in the Mopti region hit the bus, according to a security source.
“We have just transferred nine bodies to the clinic. And it’s not over yet,” Moussa Housseyni of the local Bandiagara Youth Association had said earlier.
An anonymous police officer provided a preliminary death toll of 11 and many significant injury totals.
Insurgency in Mali has displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and claimed thousands of lives.
Among the weapons of choice for jihadists are mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They can be remotely detonated or explode upon impact.
According to a report by the UN mission in Mali, MINUSMA, as of August 31 there had been 72 fatalities due to mines and IEDs. The majority of the victims are troops, while a quarter are reported to be civilians.
Recall that two weeks ago, the Malian Army reported that a Sukhoi SU-25 fighter jet belonging to the Malian Armed Forces, FAMA, and with the registration TZ-20C crashed in the Gao airport area in northern Mali.
The jet, a recent addition to the nation’s air force, was coming home on a mission supporting the local civilian population.
