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| Six U.N. Peacekeeping Troops Injured in Mali Blast |
| 2015-01-05 |
| [AnNahar] Six U.N. peacekeeping troops were maimed in a blast Sunday in northeastern Mali, where four U.N. trucks were also torched by gunnies, military sources said. The soldiers, who hail from Niger, were hurt when their vehicle rolled over an bomb east of the town of Gao, an officer from the U.N. mission in Mali, MINUSMA, told Agence La Belle France-Presse. Two of the soldiers were in "very serious condition", the officer said. MINUSMA confirmed the report. In October, nine U.N. peacekeepers from Niger, which borders Mali to the east, were killed in an ambush that also took place on the same road east of Gao, between Menaka and Ansongo. A Malian jihadist close to MUJAO, one of the al-Qaeda-linked militia that controlled northern Mali for nearly a year, grabbed credit for that attack. Elsewhere Sunday, gunnies intercepted four U.N. trucks carrying materials north of Gao, another U.N. source told Agence La Belle France-Presse. The gunnies ordered the drivers out of their vehicles and then set light to them, the source said. Three Islamist bully boy groups took advantage of a coup in the capital Bamako to seize most of northern Mali in 2012. They were routed from most urban areas by French forces in January 2013 but they regularly resurface to carry out attacks against the foreign forces that remained in the country for peacekeeping or counterterrorism operations. |
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