...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks...
peacekeepers were killed Friday when suspected jihadists staged a major attack on their camp in Aguelhok, northern Mali, the UN mission said.
The peacekeepers "bravely pushed back a complex attack carried out by several heavily armed terrorists," MINUSMA said, adding the attackers had suffered heavy losses and had abandoned "several of their dead".
In a statement, UN Secretary General António Guterres
...Portuguese politician and diplomat, ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015. He was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years...said he "condemns in the strongest terms" the assault, commending the bravery of those who repelled the attack.
The incident left 19 maimed, the statement said, in addition to the four troops who were killed.
A source in MINUSMA said the attack occurred around 200 kilometres (120 miles) from the Algerian border, targeting a contingent of peacekeepers from Chad.
A UN source described the dawn raid as of "very large magnitude" by about 100 attackers on cycle of violence
s and in vehicles."The fighting lasted three hours... mortar shells, shooting exchanges... attempted suicide boom-mobileing," the source said.
He added that about 20 assailants had been killed.
A Chadian military source said "two of our forces' positions were attacked. We lost four people, including our forces' detachment commander, and 16 were maimed."
The UN force's statement called the attack another "attempt against the grinding of the peace processor" that will "in no way undermine its determination to continue the execution of its mandate".
It thanked "international forces for their aerial support".
The attack took to 10 the number of MINUSMA troops killed this year.
- SECOND ATTACK -
Also on Friday morning, two Malian soldiers were killed and around 10 maimed in an attack blamed on jihadists in Diafarabe in the country's centre, Mali's army said in a statement.
Local resident Youssouf Aya told AFP that he had seen a line of gunnies on cycle of violences headed toward a military post, then heard gunfire.
He said the assailants had "briefly occupied" the military post before leaving along the Niger River.
Mali has been struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency that first broke out in the north in 2012 before spreading to the centre and 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...
and Niger.
Thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.
La Belle France, the former colonial power, intervened in Mali in 2013 to beat back the jihadists and now has some 5,100 soldiers deployed across the semi-arid Sahel region
... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas...
On Friday, La Belle France's military issued a statement on a separate incident, saying a woman died and a child was slightly maimed in a fire linked to an operation in Mali.
It said a suspected jihadist was also killed and two others captured in the operation overnight Wednesday to Thursday in an area southeast of Tessalit in the country's north.
According to the statement, the soldiers were shot at by the suspected jihadist in a tent and returned fire. The tent caught fire with the woman and child inside, it said. The child was evacuated to a military hospital.