Guinean UN peacekeeper dies of wounds after Mali attack

Peacekeepers faced four separate, near simultaneous attacks on Friday night in the city of Kidal, which is currently under the control of former rebels.

“The UN peacekeeper from the Guinean contingent who was seriously wounded during one of the attacks on Friday in Kidal died at the Pasteur clinic in Bamako,” the Malian capital, a tweet by the mission, known by the acronym MINUSMA, said.

The mission chief Mahamat Saleh Annadif had condemned a “deliberate attempt to put people in danger” in a statement on Saturday, when a second peacekeeper was also wounded.

Deployed since July 2013, MINUSMA currently counts 12,500 troops and police and has earned the grim distinction of being the most deadly active UN mission. Some 150 peacekeepers have been killed so far, more than 90 of them by “hostile acts”.

Peacekeepers are attempting to subdue a jihadist insurgency and to keep a fragile peace process between other armed groups on track.

Groups of Islamist extremists linked to Al-Qaeda took control of northern cities in Mali in March and April 2012, but were chased out by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013, which is still deployed alongside MINUSMA.