Bombing in Mali kills two civilians and wounded French soldiers

An attack on a military patrol in northern Mali killed two civilians and injured eight French soldiers on Sunday, the Malian Ministry of Defense said.

The attack comes two days after Islamist militants killed at least six people during an attack on a military headquarters in central Mali, a country where French troops are helping to fight the jihadists in their vast deserts [19659003] "I confirm that a car bomb struck a common patrol Barkhane / Mechelen," said the spokesman of the Ministry of Defense, Boubacar Diallo. Barkhane is the name of the French force of about 4,000 men distributed in the former colonies of the Sahel region.

About 12 people were injured in Sunday's attack, including four to eight French Barkhane soldiers, Diallo said. The army spokesman, Patrik Steiger, confirmed that civilians had been killed during an attack on Gao and that the army was checking the status of the 30-man French patrol that had been attacked.

close to three French vehicles

Photos posted on social media showed an armored vehicle on a sand road surrounded by black smoke.

No one took responsibility for the attack, occurring a month before the presidential elections scheduled for late July.

But the violence of Islamist militants has proliferated in recent years in the sparsely populated Sahel with al-Qaeda-related groups and the Islamic State using central and northern Mali as the starting point for attacks in any the region

. Western countries have provided important resources for a regional force composed of soldiers from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania to fight jihadists. But the so-called G5 force was hampered by delays in money laundering and lack of coordination among the five countries.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who complained last year that the G5 was taking too long to install, is expected to discuss security in the region in Mauritania on Monday.