Seven peacekeepers were killed and three others seriously injured on Wednesday by an explosive device in central Mali, the UN Mission in Mali (UNMISMA) said.
“A UN peacekeeping force convoy travelling from Douentza to Sevaré (central Mali) hit an explosive device on 8 December. An initial assessment shows that seven peacekeepers died and three were seriously injured,” the UNMISMA said on Twitter, without specifying the nationality of the victims.
The incident took place in the Bandiagara area, in the Mopti region, it added.
It comes a day after the announcement by the UN Mission in Mali that a peacekeeper who was hit by an improvised explosive device as his vehicle passed by on 22 November near Tessalit, in northern Mali, had died in Dakar on Monday. The nationality of the peacekeeper was not specified.
The peacekeeper had been taken to Dakar for treatment along with two other UNMISMA soldiers injured in the same incident.
Mali has been the scene of an ongoing conflict since 2012, with repeated attacks by jihadist groups affiliated to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, coupled with violence against civilians by armed groups, some of them self-defence groups.
UNMISMA, deployed in Mali since 2013, is currently the UN peacekeeping mission with the most deaths in the world, with 146 of its members killed in hostile acts as of 31 October, according to UN statistics.