2 UN Peacekeepers, Senior Al-Qaeda Leader Killed in Mali

A roadside bomb killed two UN peacekeepers in central Mali on Monday and France affirmed that it had killed a rebel leader.

"This morning, a supply convoy... struck an improvised explosive device north of Mopti," the spokesman for the UN's MINUSMA force, Olivier Salgado, said on Twitter, adding that four other peacekeepers were wounded.

The casualties were members of the force's Egyptian contingent, according to a security source.

In the same vein, the French army announced that its anti-jihadist force had gunned down the "senior leader" of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Mali identified as Yahia Djouadi.

The Algerian descendent leader was known as Abu Ammar al-Jazairi. He was killed in an overnight raid by French forces between February 25 to 26 near 160 kilometers north of Timbuktu in central Mali, the French army said in a statement.

Known as the former "emir" of Al-Qaeda's Libyan operations, Djouadi fled to Mali in 2019 and his death "once again weakens Al-Qaeda's governance" in Mali, the French Army iterated. It described the now dead al-Qaeda leader as the "major link in northern Mali and especially the Timbuktu area.”