In the latest attacks on UN peacekeepers, three Bangladeshis have died from a bomb attack in the Central African Republic (CAR), barely a week after a Pakistani was killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to a UN spokesperson.

The Bangladeshi peacekeepers in the CAR were killed when their vehicle hit an explosive ordnance device Monday night, Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday.

Another Bangladeshi peacekeeper was injured and is in hospital, he said.

On Friday, a Pakistani peacekeeper was killed in DRC when a base in Minembwe, South Kivu, was attacked “by suspected Twirwaneho combatants”, he said.

Dujarric said that attacks on peacekeepers are war crimes.

The Bangladeshis were killed when they were on patrol about five km from the CAR peacekeeping mission’s temporary base in the Ouham-Pendé prefecture, he said.

According to the peacekeeping mission, the Bangladeshi battalion patrol was to protect civilians.

The CAR peacekeeping operation known as MINUSCA, from the French initials for Mulitdimesnsiional Integrated Mission in CAR, was created in 2014, taking over an earlier operation set up in 2009.

It has 14,400 personnel with 1,333 Bangladeshi troops.

The operation has claimed the lives of 169 peacekeepers, ten of them Bangladeshis.

In January three Bangladeshi peacekeepers were killed in the CAR when their vehicle hit a landmine.

The DRC peacekeeping operation known as MONUSCO, an acronym derived from French for Organisation Stabilisation Mission in Congo, was created in 2010 to succeed an earlier mission set up in 1999.
(SAM)