Bamako--A militant opened fire on a UN residence in the Malian capital Bamako on Wednesday, wounding a civilian guard and damaging vehicles, the organisation's peacekeeping mission said.
The assailant tried to set fire to one of the force's vehicles parked in front of the residence housing troops in the city's southeastern Faso Kanu neighbourhood around 2:30 am (0230 GMT), the MINUSMA force said in a statement.
Before escaping, he shot and wounded the guard and then opened fire on the building and parked UN-marked cars, the statement added.
"MINUSMA condemns in the strongest terms this attack against its staff and property, which constitutes a serious crime under international law," the mission said.
"It calls on the Malian authorities to make every effort to identify those responsible for this act and bring them to justice."
The statement said members of UNMAS, the mission's mine-clearing service, had been called to defuse two unexploded grenades found at the scene.
A source close to the investigation described the attack as an act of "terrorism" and said the perpetrator probably had accomplices, although there was no official confirmation.
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the idea of setting the car alight was to lure a large number of peacekeepers into the street to gun them down.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but it comes at a time of strained relations between the government and MINUSMA, which complained at the weekend that its impartiality was being "regularly called into question".
Reacting to criticism of the mission by Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, the force said "neither its contribution nor its sacrifices are accorded their proper value".
Keita's broadside came at the end of a speech by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, read out in Bamako on Friday by the UN's chief peacekeeper Herve Ladsous, lamenting serious violations of ceasefire agreements "on all sides".
AFP
