Three United Nations peacekeepers and one Malian soldier were killed in an attack on Friday by unidentified assailants in northeastern Mali, the UN mission there said.
Several others soldiers are reported injured from the attack which was carried out near Mali’s border with Niger.
The MINUSMA soldiers came under fire during a joint operation in the Menaka region where raids conducted by jihadist groups – some with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State – have spiked over the last year.
“I condemn in the strongest terms this attack that has once again befallen the MINUSMA force as well as the (Malian army),” U.N. mission head Mahamat Saleh Annadif said in a statement.
The mission however did not specify the nationalities of the three soldiers killed.
Jihadist groups have exploited the porous borders between Mali and neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso to expand their range of operations, alarming Western powers who fear the growing influence of Islamist radicalism in the region.
In 2013, a French-led military intervention against militants who had seized control of Mali’s desert north a year earlier drove them back, but they are said to have regrouped and now launch regular attacks against Malian soldiers, U.N. peacekeepers and civilians.
