After suicide attack, Sahel anti-terror force vows to fight on

BAMAKO - A five-nation African anti-terror task force vowed Saturday to press on in its battle against jihadists, the day after a suicide attack on the outfit's headquarters in Mali killed two soldiers and a civilian.

Friday's attack by a bomber in a vehicle painted in UN colours destroyed the building's entrance wall.

It was the first attack on the headquarters of the G5 force, set up with the backing of France in 2017 to roll back jihadist insurgents and criminal groups in the vast, unstable Sahel region.

"The conditions of this force will improve," Mauritanian Foreign Minister Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said. "This shows our determination rather than an indication of any weakness."

The French and Cameroonian presidents condemned the attack and discussed the security situation in the Lake Chad area, the French leader's office said Saturday.

"This demonstrates once again the importance of the vision of the heads of state to create this force which can respond to these difficulties," the foreign minister said in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott.

The Al-Qaeda-linked Support Group for Islam and Muslims, the main jihadist alliance in Africa's Sahel region, claimed the attack in a telephone call to the Mauritanian news agency Al-Akhbar.

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres condemned "the complex attack perpetrated against the G5-Sahel Joint Force's Headquarters", his spokesman said in a statement.

The strike in the Malian town of Sevare came shortly after Friday prayers, a military source in the G5 Sahel force said.

Governor Sidi Alassane Toure said four suspects had been arrested.

Security shortcomings

Guterres, who visited the Sevare headquarters last month, highlighted security shortcomings on several of the force's sites in Mali in a report published in May.

"Poor conditions on and around the site represent an important security threat, and are delaying the deployment of the remaining soldiers," the report said.

Residents in Sevare, 600 kilometres (375 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, hid inside their homes during the attack, according to Bouba Bathily, a trader who sheltered from the gunfire in his house.

A local orange seller, Haoussa Haidara, said "there was a huge blast" followed by shooting that lasted more than an hour.

The strike came three days before a meeting in Nouakchott between French President Emmanuel Macron and the heads of the G5 Sahel states to discuss progress made by the force.

The G5 Sahel aims to have a total of 5,000 troops from five nations -- Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, but has faced funding problems.

It operates alongside France's 4,000 troops in the troubled "tri-border" area where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet, and alongside the UN's 12,000-strong MINUSMA peacekeeping operation in Mali.

Force's problems

The G5 Sahel was scheduled to be fully mobilised by mid-2018, but its deployment has faced delays, equipment worries and accusations of human rights abuses.

On Tuesday, the UN said Malian soldiers within the force had "summarily" executed 12 civilians in a market in central Mali in May in retaliation for the death of a soldier.

France intervened militarily in Mali in 2013 to help government forces drive Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists out of the north.

But large tracts of the country remain lawless despite a peace accord signed with ethnic Tuareg leaders in mid-2015 aimed at isolating the jihadists. The violence has also spilled over into both Burkina Faso and Niger.