ANOTHER ATTACK IN MALI

Three people have been killed in a rocket attack on a UN peacekeepers' base in northern Mali, the UN says.

Two UN peacekeepers from Guinea and a civilian contractor were killed in the attack in Kidal, officials said.

Eight days ago, gunmen attacked a hotel in the capital, Bamako, taking scores hostage. Twenty-two people were killed.

The peacekeeping mission in Mali was approved in 2014 after France led a military campaign to drive out Islamist militants from the north.

The Minusma force comprises some 10,000 soldiers from dozens of different contributor countries - the majority from Mali's west African neighbours.

World's most dangerous peacekeeping mission

The UN mission - criticised by some at the time of its approval because there is no peace deal to support - has suffered more casualties than any other in recent years, with 56 troops killed.

Islamist militants are suspected of being behind Saturday's attack, in which 14 people were injured, several seriously, reports suggest.

"Our camp in Kidal was attacked early this morning by terrorists using rockets," said an official from the Minusma force.

Militancy in Mali

October 2011: Ethnic Tuaregs launch rebellion after returning with arms from Libya

March 2012: Army coup over government's handling of rebellion, a month later Tuareg and al-Qaeda-linked fighters seize control of north

June 2012: Islamist groups capture Timbuktu, Kidal and Gao from Tuaregs, start to destroy Muslim shrines andmanuscripts and impose Sharia

January 2013: Islamist fighters capture a central town, raising fears they could reach Bamako. Mali requestsFrench help

July 2013: UN force, now totalling about 12,000, takes over responsibility for securing the north after Islamists routed from towns

July 2014: France launches an operation in the Sahel to stem jihadist groupsAttacks continue in northern desert area, blamed on Tuareg and Islamist groups

2015: Terror attacks in the capital, Bamako, and central

Comments

The Sphere

Photograph by Elena Saavedra Buckley. Once when I was about twelve I was walking down the dead-end road in Albuquerque where I grew up, around twilight with a friend. Far beyond the end of the road was a mountain range, and at that time of evening it flattened into a matte indigo wash, like a mural. While kicking down the asphalt we saw a small bright light appear at the top of the peaks, near where we knew radio towers to occasionally emit flashes of red. But this glare, blinding and colorless, grew at an alarming rate. It looked like a single floodlight and then a tight swarm beginning to leak over the edge of the summit. My friend and I became frightened, and as the light poured from the crest, our murmurs turned into screams. We stood there, clutching our heads, screaming. I knew this was the thing that was going to come and get me. It was finally going to show me the horrifying wiring that lay just behind the visible universe and that was inside of me too. And then, a couple se...

DEMOCRACY DAY SPEECH BY PMB; MAY 29 2016

www.naijaloaded.com My compatriots, It is one year today since our administration came into office. It has been a year of triumph, consolidation, pains and achievements. By age, instinct and experience, my preference is to look forward, to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead and rededicate the administration to the task of fixing Nigeria. But I believe we can also learn from the obstacles we have overcome and the progress we made thus far, to help strengthen the plans that we have in place to put Nigeria back on the path of progress. We affirm our belief in democracy as the form of government that best assures the active participation and actual benefit of the people. Despite the many years of hardship and disappointment the people of this nation have proved inherently good, industrious tolerant, patient and generous. The past years have witnessed huge flows of oil revenues. From 2010 average oil prices were $100 per barrel. But economic and security co...

The Private Life: On James Baldwin

JAMES BALDWIN IN HYDE PARK, LONDON. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALLAN WARREN. Via Wikimedia Commons , licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 . In his review of James Baldwin’s third novel, Another Country , Lionel Trilling asked: “How, in the extravagant publicness in which Mr. Baldwin lives, is he to find the inwardness which we take to be the condition of truth in the writer?” But Baldwin’s sense of inwardness had been nourished as much as it had been damaged by the excitement and danger that came from what was public and urgent. Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room dramatized the conflict between a longing for a private life, even a spiritual life, and the ways in which history and politics intrude most insidiously into the very rooms we try hardest to shut them out of. Baldwin had, early in his career, elements of what T. S. Eliot attributed to Henry James, “a mind so fine that it could not be penetrated by an idea.” The rest of the time, however, he did not have this luxury, as pub...

TOBI'S DESK

Search This Blog