Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the head of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), has announced the death of the Togolese peacekeeper who was wounded in Wednesday’s attack on a temporary MINUSMA base in central Mali.
Annadif – in a statement by MINUSMA spokesman, Olivier Salgado, conveyed his sincere condolences to the family of the peacekeeper and also to the Togolese government.
MINUSMA said on Thursday that 28 Togolese peacekeepers were injured, five seriously, in the attack Wednesday on its temporary base in Kerena, in Mali’s central region of Mopti.
Together with the five peacekeepers who died in January, a total of six peacekeepers have sacrificed their lives to the UN peacekeeping mission this year in Mali, where terrorist threats have persisted since a coup in 2012, when extremist militias took control of Mali’s north.
MINUSMA was deployed in 2013 to support political processes in Mali.
A UN-backed peace deal in 2015 between the government and various armed groups failed to stabilise the situation in the country’s central and northern regions, with attacks multiplying over the past few years.