{Two UN peacekeepers from Chad have been killed and six others wounded – some “severely” – in a suicide attack in northern Mali, the UN has said.}<\/p>\n
Civilians also died when a bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle to the checkpoint in Tessalit before blowing himself up, the statement said.<\/p>\n
One child was killed and another injured, Reuters quoted Mali government officials as saying.<\/p>\n
The UN has nearly 6,000 troops in Mali to tackle militant Islamists.<\/p>\n
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the attack “will not affect the determination of the United Nations to support the restoration of security, stability and lasting peace in Mali”. <\/p>\n
The UN Security Council condemned the attack “in the strongest terms”.<\/p>\n
It expressed condolences to the families of the peacekeepers killed, as well as to the governments of Mali and Chad. <\/p>\n
The Security Council said those responsible would be held accountable and it called Mali “to swiftly investigate… and bring the perpetrators to justice”. <\/p>\n
Mali’s defence ministry said four bombers took part in the raid and all died, Reuters reported. <\/p>\n
The UN’s special representative to Mali, Bert Koenders, earlier this month called for more troops to be deployed following an upsurge in bombings and rocket attacks.<\/p>\n
French troops captured northern Mali’s key cities and towns from the militants after launching an operation to oust them in January. <\/p>\n
It handed security responsibility to the UN force in July. <\/p>\n
The force, known as Minusma, has less than half of its mandated strength of more than 12,000 military personnel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Two UN peacekeepers from Chad have been killed and six others wounded – some “severely” – in a suicide attack in northern Mali, the UN has said.} Civilians also died when a bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle to the checkpoint in Tessalit before blowing himself up, the statement said. One child was killed and another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000048974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000048974,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11121.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11121.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11121.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11121.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11121.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11121.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000048974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11121"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11121"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}