Ivory Coast: military ceremony in honor of the first peacekeepers who died in combat
Ivorian Prime Minister Hamed Bakayoko, Abidjan, January 25, 2021, during the tribute ceremony to peacekeepers killed in Mali.
AFP - SIA KAMBOU
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2 min
Côte d'Ivoire paid national tribute on Monday to the four Ivorian peacekeepers killed on January 13 in a jihadist attack in northern Mali.
A ceremony held at the Galliéni camp in Abidjan.
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With our correspondent in Abidjan
,
Pierre Pinto
Posthumously
, Chief Sergeants Adama Bakayoko and Yacouba Doumbia, Sergeant Jean-Bernard Amian Guiégui and Corporal Moustapha Bamba were decorated by Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Hamed Bakayoko.
They were also promoted to the next rank in the presence of President Alassane Ouattara and the head of the UN mission in Mali, Minusma, Mahamat Saleh Annadif.
Then the Ivorian Chief of Staff, General Lacina Doumbia, delivered the funeral oration
for the first soldiers from Côte d'Ivoire who
died in an external operation: “
It is almost half past twelve when a detonation tears the great silence of desert in this afternoon.
The lead armored vehicle has just jumped on an improvised explosive device.
Then follow bursts of automatic weapons.
The soldiers deploy and commit all their means.
The confrontation is particularly violent in the face of an enemy in ambush
[...]
After thirty minutes, the response intensifies and the adversary is routed.
"
In Mali, Côte d'Ivoire has a mechanized infantry battalion, based in Timbuktu, a protection company in Mopti and a security section in Bamako.
In total, the Minusma has nearly a thousand Ivorians in its ranks.
A commitment that there is no question of revising downwards, hammered General Doumbia: "[Do we have a choice]
, either we agree to fight in the sandy desert of Timbuktu in Gao, in Kidal, in Mopti where we will be forced to fight in the savannas of Tengréla, in the forests of Daloa or on the edges of the Ébrié lagoon.
"
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Ivory Coast
Mali
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