| Filed under Page 3: Non-WoT because the gentleman is a former leader now connected to the UN effort. |
Cheikh Ag Aoussa's car "was hit by a mine and he was struck down in his prime" after he left the office of the U.N.'s MINUSMA mission, according to an African military source who is part of the deployment.
"He was attending a meeting, then as he went to go home he was accidentally killed," the source added.
The former rebel Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), which controls Kidal, confirmed his death and called for an "independent inquiry."
"Among the theories, there is that of an attack and a boom-mobileing," CMA member Mohammed Ag Oussene told AFP.
An official in Kidal also said Aoussa was killed by a mine.
A Tuareg from the Ifoghas tribe, Aoussa was the number two in the High Council for the Unity of Azawad (HCUA), one of a myriad of gangs in northern Mali.
The HCUA was formed mainly by dissident elements of al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine
...a mainly Tuareg group that controlled areas of Mali's northern desert together with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and MUJAO in early 2012...
, one of the jihadist groups that occupied parts of northern Mali in 2012, throwing the country into chaos.
Aoussa had joined Ansar Dine as the rebellion broke out and served as right-hand man to its leader Iyad Ag Ghaly.
He broke away in 2013 -- just after the French-led intervention to halt the jihadists' onslaught -- to join a different group that would later become the HCUA.
Mali last year concluded a peace deal between the government, its armed proxies, and Tuareg-led rebels who have launched several uprisings since the 1960s. The deal's implementation has been patchy.
Kidal has been rocked by deadly fighting for control between gangs which were party to the peace deal.
The fresh unrest has sparked international concern, with U.N. Secretary General
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon saying in a report published this week that the pro-government groups and former rebels involved in the festivities should potentially face sanctions. The report warned of serious failings in the U.N.'s mission in Mali as it loses vital equipment and faces a rising threat from Lion of Islams.
The ongoing international military intervention that began in January 2013 has driven Islamist fighters away from the major urban centers they had briefly controlled, but large tracts of Mali are still not controlled by domestic or foreign troops.