麻豆约拍

Three Chadian United Nations peacekeeping soldiers from the Minusma mission in Mali were killed on Thursday 26th October, when their vehicle drove over a mine. There are currently more than 12,000 United Nations soldiers and police in the north of Mali, fighting Tuareg separatists and various Islamist militant groups, some affiliated with al-Qaeda.

More than 80 so-called blue helmets have been killed there since the mission began in July 2013, making Minusma the deadliest UN peacekeeping mission since Somalia in the mid-nineties.

麻豆约拍 Afrique鈥檚 Lamine Konkobo tells 麻豆约拍 Minute about the background to the ongoing conflict.

Photo: A Bangladeshi UN soldier at the weekly cattle market in Gao, Mali, March 2017, Credit: Alexander Koerner/Getty Images