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The country’s UN peacekeeping mission said it was the headquarters of Malian, French and UN troops in Tessalit.
Three United Nations peacekeepers have been seriously injured in a rocket attack on a military base in northern Mali, according to UN and local officials.
Olivier Salgado, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission in the West African country, said Sunday’s attack took place at a Tessalite base that includes Malian soldiers, UN peacekeepers and French troops, the AFP news agency reported.
Three peacekeepers were “seriously injured” in the attack, he added.
A leader of the Tessalit tribe, who refused to be named, told AFP that the camp had entered under a rocket.
“The situation is calm and under control at the moment,” he said.
Mali has been fighting a savage uprising since 2012, when rebel fighters first emerged in an uprising by ethnic Tuareg separatists in the north.
France intervened to crush the insurgency, but the fighters dispersed and reunited, moving the campaign to central Mali in 2015 and the subsequent Niger and Burkina Faso districts.
Founded in 2013, MINUSMA, with 13,000 people, has one of the highest death rates in any UN peacekeeping mission.
According to UN statistics, more than 130 workers have been killed as a result of hostile actions, including six this year, about 230 dead since the mission began.
Earlier this month, there were four UN peacekeepers hil and several other wounded fighters after the attack on the northern town of Aguelho.
In March, about 100 armed Army fighters were on trucks and motorbikes attacked a military post in Tessit that killed at least 33 soldiers. The army said it killed 20 attackers.
Nine soldiers were killed and nine others wounded attack in February near the town of central Bandiagara.
Insurgent attacks in central Mali typically involve road bombs or attacks on motorcycles or trucks.
Meanwhile, insecurity has spread in the arid scrublands of the Sahel, towards Burkina Faso and Niger, fueling poverty and ethnic tensions between groups exploiting the poverty of marginalized communities.
The attacks increased fivefold between 2016 and 2020, when 4,000 people were killed last year in the three countries, up from 770 in 2016, according to the UN.
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