A massive explosion was heard near Gao in northern Mali late Saturday, hours after villagers near the city detained two youths preparing for suicide bombings.<\/p>\n
A French military source said the blast, which went off at around 11:00 pm (2300 GMT), happened some 10 kilometres (six miles) away from the French military base at the city’s airport, but could provide no further details.<\/p>\n
An AFP correspondent said the blast was audible from Gao, the main city in northern Mali which was only recaptured from the Islamists late last month.<\/p>\n
At about half past midnight Sunday, French military helicopters could be heard in the air.<\/p>\n
The city was already on edge after what is thought to have been Mali’s first suicide attack on Friday, when a young Tuareg blew himself up, slightly injuring a Malian soldier at the northern entrance to the city.<\/p>\n
Malian troops reinforced army checkpoints with sandbags and heavy machine-guns and stepped patrols.<\/p>\n
Then on Saturday morning, residents of a village near Gao detained two young men they said were carrying explosive belts on the road leading to the site of Friday’s attack.<\/p>\n
The latest attacks came as reports said that the bodies of several people, including three Arab shopkeepers recently arrested by Malian troops, had been discovered in a grave in Timbuktu further to the northwest.<\/p>\n
Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A massive explosion was heard near Gao in northern Mali late Saturday, hours after villagers near the city detained two youths preparing for suicide bombings. A French military source said the blast, which went off at around 11:00 pm (2300 GMT), happened some 10 kilometres (six miles) away from the French military base at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","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":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5781"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5781"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}