A United Nations peacekeeper was killed and five others injured in two attacks in Mali on Sunday October 6, the UN mission in the country said.

A peacekeeper was killed and four others injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb near Aguelhok in northern Mali, Olivier Salgado, spokesman for MINUSMA, the UN mission in Mali , tweeted. The vehicle was part of a security patrol.

A rapid reaction force, backed by an air response, was deployed to the site of the blast and the injured were evacuated to MINUSMA hospitals, the mission said in a subsequent Facebook post.

Aguelhok is in the Kidal region in the northern desert of Mali, about 120 km (75 miles) north of the city of Kidal towards the border with Algeria.

Elsewhere, MINUSMA blue helmets responded to an attack by “elements of an unidentified armed group” against a temporary operating base in the vicinity of Bandiagara in the central region of Mopti around 1 a.m., Salgado tweeted.

A peacekeeper was seriously injured and evacuated by helicopter for medical treatment, MINUSMA said in the Facebook post.

MINUSMA’s stabilization mission in Mali, which began in 2013, is the UN’s third largest: in August, 12,543 soldiers, 1,750 police and 491 staff officers were deployed.

MINUSMA is considered one of the most dangerous peacekeeping missions, and attacks on peacekeepers in the center and north of the country are frequent. Sunday’s incident brings to 19 the number of peacekeepers who have died this year alone.

In the deadliest incident this year, 11 Chadian peacekeepers died after an attack on a UN base in Aguelhok in January. This attack was claimed by JNIM, a Sahelian affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

More recently, on May 19, a Nigerian peacekeeper was killed and another injured in an armed attack in Timbuktu, central Mali. Three Chadian peacekeepers were injured in a roadside bomb attack in Tessalit, northern Mali, on the same day.

Many armed groups are active in Mali and throughout the Sahel region. Most of the insurgent attacks are attributed to the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (JNIM) which formed in March 2017 from the merger of several smaller groups, including the Saharan branch of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and Al-Mourabitoun. The JNIM leadership has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Islamic State-affiliated groups are also active. Since May, ISIS has attributed insurgent activities in the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger tri-border area to its branch in the West Africa Province, rather than what was previously known as the name of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.

In 2012, a Tuareg separatist uprising against the state was exploited by al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists who took over key desert towns in northern Mali.

France began its Operation Serval military intervention in its former colony early the following year, driving the jihadists out of the cities, and the MINUSMA peacekeeping force was then created.

But militant groups morphed into more nimble formations operating in rural areas, and the insurgency gradually spread to parts of central and southern Mali and across borders into neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso. Large swaths of Mali remain outside government control and inter-ethnic bloodshed occurs regularly.

The Serval mission evolved in August 2014 into Operation Barkhane, which has a mandate for counterterrorism operations across the Sahel. About 4,500 French soldiers are deployed in the region, including about 2,700 soldiers in Mali. Estonian personnel and UK helicopters are supporting the Barkhane force, and Denmark has announced plans to send two helicopters and up to 70 troops.

Barkhane is focusing its activities in insurgent-affected Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and the troops are working alongside other international operations, including MINUSMA and the G5 Sahel Joint Force, the planned 4,500-man joint counterterrorism force. long-standing including troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Mauritania.

France calls for international support for the Sahel military coalition