Four dead as migrant truck attacked in Mali: sources

Bamako: Armed men attacked a lorry carrying migrants in northern Mali, killing four people and wounding six, UN and medical sources have said.

Four men on motorbikes opened fire on the lorry as it travelled towards Kidal, in the country's far northeast, a medical source told AFP, citing witness accounts.

They shot out the tyres before turning the guns on the passengers, who included people from Mali, Guinea, Niger and Nigeria.

The UN mission in Mali yesterday said the wounded were taken by helicopter to Gao, the main city in the restive north, for treatment. The dead were buried where they were.

The medical source said the dead included four Malians and a Guinean, without saying whether they were men or women.

A Malian security source in the north of the country confirmed the attack, without giving a death toll, but adding that 30 people had survived.

The migrants are thought to have been on their way to Algeria. Mali has been plagued by unrest since the north of the vast west African state fell under the control of Tuareg rebels and jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda in 2012.

A French-led military intervention in January 2013 recaptured much of the territory they had seized, but nearly three years later, large swathes of Mali still remain lawless.