Three United Nations troops were killed and five others were seriously injured Sunday by an explosion in Mali, underscoring the dangers facing the four-year-old peacekeeping mission in the country.
The forces were escorting a convoy around 7 a.m. along a road connecting the village of Anefis to the city of Gao in northern Mali when it either hit a mine or triggered an explosive device, according to a statement by the peacekeeping mission, the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali.
“My thoughts are with those who died and were wounded this morning and their families,” said Koen Davidse, a Dutch diplomat who is the U.N. secretary-general’s deputy special representative for Mali.
He said the mission had sent a “rapid response force” to the scene to secure the area and to allow the wounded to be cared for.
The names and nationalities of the troops who were killed and injured were not immediately released.
Mali had been one of West Africa’s most stable nations before 2012, when secular Tuareg separatists began an uprising, as they had done in the past. Islamist militants linked to al-Qaida took advantage of the deteriorating security situation.
The peacekeeping mission was established in 2013 after French forces halted an advance by the militants, who had seized control of the north and threatened to march into the south and onto the capital, Bamako. The government and the Tuareg rebels have signed several peace deals, but implementing them has been difficult and attacks from the Islamist militants have continued.
Gao has been particularly hard hit by violence: A suicide bomber blew up a car filled with explosives at a military camp there on Jan. 18, killing dozens of people.
The U.N. mission employs more than 12,000 uniformed personnel and 1,350 civilians, at an annual cost of $1 billion.
As of Aug. 31, the mission had recorded 133 fatalities, a particularly disturbing figure given that the mission is only four years old. Peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, Darfur, Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia have seen more fatalities, but those missions have been going on for far longer -- in some cases for decades.