Bamako: Two Malian soldiers were killed and 10 wounded Tuesday in a suspected jihadist attack in the country’s troubled north, the defence ministry said, Wednesday. A post in Tarkint, near the city of Gao ‘was the object of a sophisticated attack’, a statement said.
A 14,000-strong UN military and police personnel have been deployed in Mali since 2013 to help counter jihadist activity.
In his last quarterly report on Mali, UN chief Antonio Guterres said more than half of the attacks by armed groups targetted Malian security forces, especially in the central Mopti region and Timbuktu and Gao in the north.
Mali, one of the world’s poorest countries, has struggled to return to stability since extremists linked to Al-Qaeda took control of the north in 2012, prompting French military intervention.
The jihadists were routed from key desert towns such as Timbuktu and Gao, but large stretches of the landlocked Sahel state remain out of government control.
A peace deal between the government and armed groups was signed in 2015, but its implementation has been slow and attacks have continued in the centre and north.
AFP