[PULSE.NG] Seventeen non-combatants were killed and 15 were maimed in a blast caused by a booby-trapped corpse in central Mali, security sources and a local official said on Wednesday.The incident occurred on Tuesday in Diankabou, a small town about 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of the city of Mopti, they said.
A local official told AFP it was caused by "an bomb which was planted on the body of a man who had been rubbed out."
A security source confirmed the information, saying: "The body went
kaboom!, killing 17 people."
Among the victims were the parents of the man whose body had been booby-trapped, he said.
The man had gone to find food for his cattle and had never returned. His parents then found the corpse.
"They rather unwisely approached the body which went
kaboom!, killing 17 people. The button men who killed him had planted explosives on his body and around it," the source said.
"This is a method that jihadists use to cause maximum deaths," another security source said.
The attack was the first incident of its kind in Mali. On February 14, jihadists in neighbouring Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
used an identical method, rigging a corpse dressed in military fatigues with explosives. The blast killed two coppers and an army doctor.
Mali has been struggling to return to stability after al-Qaeda-linked bully boyz took control of the north in early 2012, prompting a military intervention by La Belle France.
Although they were routed in the French operation in 2013, large stretches of the landlocked African state remain out of government control.