Mali hunts jihadist nightclub killers as militants attack UN

Police in Mali March 8 hunted for the killers of two Europeans and three Malians in a jihadist attack on a nightclub, as a deadly assault on a UN barracks in the north heightened security concerns.
      
Officers in bulletproof vests patrolled the streets of the capital Bamako, where a masked gunman had burst into La Terrase, a popular venue among expats, spraying automatic gunfire and throwing grenades early Saturday.
      
Al-Murabitoun, a jihadist group run by leading Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, has claimed responsibility for the attack, which left a Frenchman, a Belgian and three Malians dead.
      
It said in an audio recording carried by Mauritanian news agency Al-Akbar the operation was carried out "to avenge our prophet against the unbelieving West which has insulted and mocked him".
      
As the investigation got under way, the UN's MINUSMA peacekeeping force said one of its troops and two civilians had been killed by militants shelling its barracks in the northeastern rebel stronghold of Kidal.
      
MINUSMA sources said the civilians were members of the nomadic Arab Kunta tribe who died as stray rockets landed at their nearby encampment.
      
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, although the Kidal is the cradle of northern Mali's Tuareg separatist movement, which has launched several uprisings from the region since the 1960s.        

Tuareg and Arab militias -- loyalist and anti-government -- have forged a peace agreement with the Malian government formulated earlier this month in Algiers, but the main rebel groups are yet to sign.
      
"MINUSMA expresses its indignation at the cowardice of the perpetrators of these attacks, which also killed...