Tuareg rebels fired at a United States military plane dropping provisions to Malian troops in the north of the African country, but did not hit it, a US diplomatic source said here on Thursday.
”Our plane was shot at … but there was no damage,” the source said, adding that the plane completed its mission and returned to the Malian capital, Bamako. ”The [Tuareg] rebels did it,” the source said.
The shooting occurred two days after Western ambassadors said that unrest in northern Mali was causing increasing concern internationally. Low-level violence has for weeks simmered in the region, where armed Tuaregs — an indigenous, nomadic Berber people — have been demanding resources for development.
The plane was shot at on Wednesday during the second of two flight missions to troops fighting Tuareg rebels near the country’s border with Algeria.
”There were two series of shootings, but the plane flew higher after the first series,” a local NGO official, declining to be named, said by telephone. It then dived towards the west of Tinzaouatene, in the north-eastern Kidal region, to deliver the remaining supplies, she said.
The plane had been in Mali for a military exercise called Flintlock 2007, which finished last week, but Mali afterwards requested help with the delivery of supplies to its troops, a US official said on Wednesday.
Western ambassadors in Bamako in a joint statement on Monday ”resolutely condemned” hostage-taking and the use of landmines in northern Mali, noting that the civilian population there was increasingly being put at risk.
In some cases, the Malian rebels appear to be allied to Tuareg tribes in neighbouring Niger, where an insurgency erupted in February over demands for a share in revenue from the country’s uranium mining.
Tuaregs in Algeria have also been active, and on August 30 and 31, 16 civilians died in the border area when their trucks drove over mines.
Just days earlier, Malian Tuaregs abducted about 50 people — most of them soldiers — in surprise raids. About 20 have been freed, some by force and some through negotiations, but the others remain hostages.
Both sides have appealed to Algeria to help with the situation. — Sapa-AFP