{At least 77 killed in attack claimed by AQIM, French army spokesman says, as three-day mourning period begins.}<\/p>\n
The death toll from Wednesday’s bomb attack on a military camp in northern Mali has risen to 77, a French army spokesman said.<\/p>\n
The area hit by the blast houses government soldiers and armed groups who conduct mixed patrols under a UN-brokered peace deal aimed at curbing violence in the region.<\/p>\n
“We regret to say that there are 77 deaths,” said Colonel Patrik Steiger, speaking to reporters in Paris.<\/p>\n
France intervened in Mali in 2013 to drive back groups that got control of large swathes of the country a year earlier, and it maintains a large, regional operation.<\/p>\n
Wednesday morning’s explosion hit the Joint Operational Mechanism base in Gao, which was seized by armed groups in 2012 before French forces drove them out a year later.<\/p>\n
Specifically, former rebels from the Tuareg-led CMA movement were preparing to go on a joint patrol with pro-government militia members, under the terms of the 2015 agreement, when the attacker struck.<\/p>\n
President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita declared a three-day mourning period following the attack, the worst in years.<\/p>\n
Witnesses said the car bearing explosives breached the camp at around 9am, just as hundreds of fighters were gathering for a meeting.<\/p>\n
Diarran Kone, a Mali army spokesperson, said the attacker’s vehicle bore the logo of the unit coordinating the joint patrols.<\/p>\n
{{AQIM claims blast}}<\/p>\n
Later on Wednesday, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa, AQIM, claimed responsibility for the bombing, according to the SITE Intel monitoring group.<\/p>\n
AQIM described the attack on the Joint Operational Mechanism base as “punishment for cooperation with France”.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred days after Francois Hollande, the French president, visited the camp.<\/p>\n
Gao is considered the best-secured town in northern Mali, with multiple UN, French and Malian army checkpoints along main roads.<\/p>\n
However, the offices of the UN peacekeeping mission located next to the airport terminal were razed by a truck-bomb explosion last month.<\/p>\n
The UN has deployed 13,000 troops in Mali to serve in the MINUSMA force, considered one of the deadliest missions in peacekeeping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{At least 77 killed in attack claimed by AQIM, French army spokesman says, as three-day mourning period begins.} The death toll from Wednesday’s bomb attack on a military camp in northern Mali has risen to 77, a French army spokesman said. The area hit by the blast houses government soldiers and armed groups who conduct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","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":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","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":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31956","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31956"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31956"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}