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Islamist militants attack base of regional military force in Mali
People enter the G5 Sahel force's new military headquarters in Sevare, in central Mal,i October 22, 2017. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Aaron Ross
29/06/2018
BAMAKO (Reuters) - Islamist militants raided the headquarters of a regional military taskforce in central Mali on Friday afternoon, opening fire with rockets and guns and attempting to infiltrate the base, the defence ministry said.
There were no immediate details on casualties at the compound in Sevare used by the G5 Sahel, a mission created last year to root out jihadist violence in West Africa's semi-arid Sahel region, ministry spokesman Boubacar Diallo told Reuters.
He added that Malian forces were securing the site. A U.N. source in Sevare, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the compound was also hit by a car bomb but that gunfire had died down by mid-afternoon.
A spokesman for the G5 force, which is made up of soldiers from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania, confirmed the attack but did not have further details.
Violence by Islamist militants has proliferated in the sparsely-populated Sahel in recent years, with groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State using central and northern Mali as a launchpad for attacks across the region.
Western powers, including France and the United States, have provided significant funding to the G5 in a bid to beat back the jihadists. But the force has been slow to get off the ground, hobbled by delays disbursing the money and coordinating among the five countries.
A separate U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA, declined to comment on the attack.
(Reporting By Souleymane Ag Anara; Additional reporting by Sofia Christensen in Dakar; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Catherine Evans, Andrew Heavens and Peter Graff)
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