The UN Stabilization Mission in Mali, MINUSMA, reported on Saturday that two peacekeepers had been killed and several others wounded, following on from a coordinated attack at dawn, on a base in the north of the country.
A proliferation of armed groups fighting government forces and their allies in the center and northern areas of Mali following a failed coup six years ago, have made MINUSMA the most dangerous mission to serve in as a UN ‘blue helmet. A statement from the Mission said that peacekeepers based in Ber, close to Timbuktu, had “repelled a complex attack, launched simultaneously by several pickups armed with rocket launchers and machine guns”, as dawn broke on Saturday.