Dakar (AFP) - A Senegalese peacekeeper was killed Tuesday as a UN camp in northern Mali came under rocket fire in an attack blamed on a jihadist leader driven from the country by French troops. Iyad Ag Ghaly, who led a Tuareg rebellion in the Sahara before setting up the armed group Ansar Dine, disappeared in January 2013 soon after France intervened to drive Islamist insurgents back from the capital Bamako. He resurfaced last month to issue a video message signalling a return to combat, saying his group was "ready to unite with our brothers on the ground to face up to the crusaders and infidels who have united to fight Islam in our land". "The Malian Islamist Iyad Ag Ghaly has carried out his threat by attacking the camp of the UN mission in Kidal," a source from the UN's MINUSMA force in Mali told AFP. The source said at least five rockets were fired and added that the "provisional death toll" was one peacekeeper, giving his nationality as Senegalese.
A resident of Kidal contacted by AFP by telephone confirmed the information. "The camp was attacked, we heard loud noises. It's rockets. It's dark here now and we don't know what is happening," he said. The attack comes just days after nine UN soldiers, all from Niger, were killed in the north-eastern desert when they were targeted by armed men on motorbikes in an attack claimed by an Islamist with links to Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO). Friday's ambush brought to 30 the number of deaths in the UN mission since its deployment in July last year.
- 'Shameful acts' -
In a 23-minute video in Arabic put online in August, Ghaly accused the French and their Malian army allies of a litany of atrocities against the people of northern Mali that "brings shivers to the spine". Flanked by a black jihadist flag and a Kalashnikov rifle, his long monologue was interspersed with images of French interests in Africa.
Ansar Dine, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and MUJAO occupied the desert north, a vast chunk of land which makes up nearly two thirds of the country, for ten months before they were ousted by a French-led military intervention in January 2013. Herve Ladsous, the UN's head of peacekeeping, vowed Tuesday to hunt down the killers of the nine Nigerien soldiers. "So that those responsible are fully aware, they will be punished, they will be prosecuted, they will pay for these shameful acts," Ladsous said at the soldiers' funeral in the Malian capital Bamako.
Coffins of the soldiers were draped with a UN flag at the service at the headquarters of MINUSMA, and they were posthumously decorated. "I want to tell you how we experienced, even in New York, the intensity of this tragedy, a tragedy that comes after many others," said Ladsous. "No less than 30 peacekeepers have sacrificed their lives since the start of MINUSMA." The Malian government is in negotiations with six armed groups to bring peace to northern Mali. Ladsous urged all parties to honour a ceasefire agreed as part of the talks.
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