Four United Nations peacekeepers were killed in an alleged jihadist attack, the UN mission announced on Friday.
According to the organisation’s statement, the peacekeepers pushed back several attacks carried out by "heavily armed terrorists" that left four troops dead and several wounded.
"Helicopters were dispatched to the scene to evacuate the wounded", the statement adds.
This week, the UN mission in Mali published a report, saying that 19 civilians were killed on 3 January near the village of Bounti, when two French fighter jets dropped bombs on a group of people identified as Islamist militants.
The French Ministry of Defense has rejected these findings, arguing that the targeted an "armed terrorist group."
Mali has been in the depths of a security crisis since 2012, when a separatist uprising in the country's north grew into a full-scale terrorist threat, spreading to the central regions of the west African nation. Jihadist groups have regularly attacked the Malian army and forces from its allies in the G5 Sahel bloc, as well as European troops.