A convoy returning from a market fell asleep near Wagia on Thursday, an army officer and two local elected officials said yesterday.
Six civilians and two Egyptian blue helmets of the UN mission in Mali were killed the day before yesterday, Thursday and yesterday, Friday, when two improvised explosive devices were detonated in different attacks in the central part of the country, according to local sources and international officials.
A convoy returning from a market fell asleep near Wagia on Thursday, an army officer and two local elected officials said yesterday. They spoke on condition that they were not named for security reasons, given the presence of jihadists in the area.
Five civilians were killed on the spot, the sixth succumbed to his injuries a day later, the same sources clarified.
Two MINUSMA soldiers were killed and a third was injured when an improvised explosive device exploded near Dwenja on the road leading to Timbuktu (north) on Friday, a spokesman for the peace force, Olivier Salgado, said on social media.
They were members of the Egyptian detachment of MINUSMA, according to an officer of the security forces.
The dead blue helmets thus reached three in equal days. A Jordanian blue helmet was killed Wednesday in an attack with light weapons and rocket launchers against the convoy he was riding in Kindal (north).
MINUSMA, numbering about 13,000 troops, was created in 2013 to support the political process in Mali. It is the UN peacekeeping mission that has suffered by far the most casualties. In all, 174 blue helmets have been killed in attacks, she said.
The improvised explosive devices are the weapon of choice for the jihadists, both against the blue helmets and against the Mali army. By nature, they also kill many civilians.
Seven Togolese blue helmets aboard a supply convoy were killed when such a device exploded in December 2021 between Duenza and Sevare.
The blue helmets that died yesterday were part of a detachment that accompanied, with more than ten UN vehicles, civilian fuel trucks, Mr. Salgado clarified. Emissions of this type are often miles long.
A mine exploded as a MINUSMA vehicle was passing by, the spokesman explained.
Mines can be fired either by contact or remotely.
The head of MINUSMA, El Gassim Wane, spoke about “a very hard week for us” via Twitter. “We can not say enough about the difficulty of our duty and the enormous dedication of our blue helmets,” he added.
“Despite the difficult conditions (…) our colleagues continue their work under their mandate” by the Security Council, he added, referring to the participation of MINUSMA in the recent restoration of two bridges that had been destroyed in attacks in the same area.
Central Mali is one of the main hotbeds of bloodshed in the Sahel. Starting in the north, the wave of violence spread to the central part of the country, as well as to neighboring states (Burkina Faso, Niger). It has cost the lives of thousands of people, civilians and combatants, and has uprooted hundreds of thousands of residents.
Two recently released reports, one by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the other by MINUSMA’s human rights watchdog, have sounded the alarm about the escalation of violence.
