Six U.N. peacekeepers were killed and five others were injured Thursday in an attack on their convoy in the West African nation of Mali, the United Nations said.
All 11 peacekeepers were from neighboring Burkina Faso. Details about the attack, which happened in central Mali’s Timbuktu region, weren’t immediately available, and the United Nations didn’t say who was behind the assault.
The attack brings to 42 the number of peacekeepers killed in Mali since their mission began in 2013. The United Nations sent peacekeepers to Mali in April 2013 to guard against militant Islamists who threatened to move on the West African nation’s capital, Bamako.
“These attacks will not alter the determination of the United Nations to support the Malian people and the peace process,” the office of the spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a news release Thursday.
Thousands of military personnel and hundreds of police officers were deployed under the peacekeeping mission.
