BAMAKO: Suspected militants on motorbikes killed nine United Nations peacekeepers from Niger on Friday in northeastern Mali, in the deadliest ever attack on the mission, military sources said.

MINUSMA did not immediately hold any armed group responsible, but a Nigerien officer from the mission told AFP the ambush had been carried out by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an Al-Qaeda-linked militia behind numerous attacks in the restive west African nation.

“This is the deadliest attack against the UN mission in Mali,” a statement from the mission said, adding that aircraft had been deployed to secure the area.

MINUSMA and a senior Nigerien military official said the convoy of peacekeepers on a supply run in the northeastern Menaka-Asongo corridor, had been ambushed by men on motorbikes.

Arnauld Akodjenou, the deputy head of the mission, said he was “horrified” by the “cowardly” attack.

“Once again, lives have been lost in the name of peace in Mali. These crimes must not go unpunished,” he said in the statement.

“This violence must stop immediately and MINUSMA again challenges all those involved in finding solutions for sustainable peace to take responsibility for a rapid resolution of the crisis that has lasted too long.”

The Nigerien MINUSMA source said MUJAO had formed an alliance with militants from the Fulani ethnic group in the Gao region where the attack took place.

“The terrorists had threatened to carry out attacks, attacks in the run-up to the Eid Al-Adha festival. They’ve just carried them out,” added a Malian military source.

The deaths mark the first losses suffered by Niger’s 600-strong force, deployed to Mali in January last year.

Menaka, an isolated Sahara desert town in eastern Mali crisscrossed by seasonally dry riverbeds, is used mainly as a temporary home by nomadic Tuareg tribes.

It was the scene of heavy fighting between the Mali government and the three main separatist rebel groups in May.

The region of Gao is part of a large swathe of desert which is the cradle of a Tuareg separatist movement that wants independence for the homeland it calls “Azawad,” and from which several rebellions have been launched since the 1960s.

Around 50 Malian solders were killed around Menaka and the flashpoint town of Kidal further north by Tuareg and Arab insurgents in May.