At least thirteen United Nations Peacekeepers were badly wounded in a car bomb, and six Malian soldiers killed in separate attacks by armed militants in Mali.
The UN Peacekeepers were caught by the car bomb in Mali’s troubled Northern region, where militants attacked a temporary base set up by the peacekeepers near a village called Ichagara in the troubled Gao region. Insurgents with strong connections to Al Qaeda and Islamic State hold sway in the region and have caused more devastation in the past few months.
The UN mission detailed the identity of the wounded soldiers as 12 Germans and 1 Belgian as it revised the numbers down, hours after revealing 15 soldiers were wounded by the car bomb.
Germany’s Minister of Defence, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said three of the soldiers were badly caught with two currently in a stable condition. The third is undergoing surgery for the severe injuries he sustained.
In a separate attack in Boni in Mali’s Mopti region, at least six Malian soldiers were killed by armed militants. The terrorists have been a bone in the throat for locals since 2013, with villagers having to be protected by the UN’s Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali(MINUSMA) who have about 13,000 soldiers in different parts of the country.
MINUSMA help protect the northern region of Mali, through its borders with Burkina Faso and Niger where the Sahel region countries face severe terrorist incursions. The mission has suffered 230 fatalities so far and is the worst-hit UN Mission in the world.
Germany contributes up to 1,100 soldiers to the MINUSMA mission in Mali.