Victims of Mali resort attack worked for EU

THE two civilians killed in a jihadist attack on Sunday on a Mali tourist resort were working for the European Union, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, said yesterday.

“Unfortunately, I can confirm that there were two victims among our European Union colleagues, a Malian woman and a Portuguese man,” Mogherini said after an EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg.

The EU runs an advisory mission to help train the Mali armed forces and maintains a delegation in the capital, Bamako.

The Malian government said four attackers were killed on the scene and 36 hostages freed, with a further five suspected jihadists in custody over Sunday’s attack near Bamako.

No group has as yet claimed the assault at the Kangaba Le Campement resort, in which most of the hostages were French and Malian.

Jihadists constantly target domestic and foreign forces in Mali’s troubled north and centre, but attacks on civilians in and around the capital are much rarer, with the last major incident in November 2015 when gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu hotel.

That attack, which killed 20 people, caused the government to instate a state of emergency which has been in place more or less ever since.

Residents living close to the Kangaba resort had first reported the attack after hearing shots while smoke billowed into the air, with at least one building ablaze, and special forces remained on the scene yesterday, Security Minister Salif Traore said.

A witness interviewed on local television ORTM said he saw a man arrive on a motorcycle and start shooting, followed by two or three people who came in another vehicle.

Others said the assailants had shouted “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is greatest”.

Earlier this month, the US embassy in Bamako had warned about a possible increased threat of attacks against Western diplomatic missions, places of worship and other places frequented by Westerners in the city.

Sunday’s attack is the latest in a series of high-profile assaults in north and west Africa targeting residents and tourists, including in neighbouring Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

But in a sign of Mali’s instability, one soldier was killed and three were wounded yesterday morning in the northern town of Bamba, in what the armed forces said was yet another terrorist attack.

In 2012, Mali’s north fell under the control of jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda who hijacked an ethnic Tuareg-led rebel uprising, though the Islamists were largely ousted by a French-led military operation in January 2013.

Since then, jihadists have continued to mount numerous attacks on civilians and the army, as well as on French and UN forces stationed there.

The unrest has continued despite a 2015 peace deal between the government and Tuareg-led rebels that aimed to tackle some of the grievances held by separatists in the north.

Despite the presence of a 12 000-strong UN peacekeeping mission and some of the 4 000 French troops serving in a separate counter-terrorism force operating across the Sahel region, instability is growing.

Meanwhile, Nigerian emergency services said yesterday at least 16 people died in a double suicide bombing near a camp for people made homeless by years of Boko Haram violence.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said the attack took place at about 8.45pm on Sunday close to the Dalori camp in Kofa village, near Borno state capital Maiduguri.

Regional NEMA spokesman Abdulkadir Ibrahim said a first attack by two female suicide bombers had been thwarted by security personnel who stopped them getting into the camp.

“Two other female suicide bombers also detonated their explosives at the adjoining Dalori Kofa village, where they killed 16 people.”

There are nearly 50 000 internally displaced people in the two Dalori camps.

Boko Haram also attacked Gumsuri village, 20km from Chibok, killing five people late on Saturday, residents said. They were fought off by vigilantes in a gun-battle. – AFP