3 dead as unknown gunmen attack UN Mali base

Three people - two UN peacekeepers and one civilian - have been killed in an attack on a UN base in northern Mali, according to UN sources. There are conflicting reports, but it is believed to have been a mortar attack.

"The attack happened at around 4 a.m. (0400 GMT). Four or five rockets landed inside the base. Quite a few people were wounded but it's too early for a precise number," Olivier Salgado, spokesman for the UN forces in Mali, told Reuters.

It comes just over a week after an assault on a luxurious hotel left 20 people dead, many of them foreign citizens.