UN peacekeepers made an early withdrawal from their camp at Tessalit in northern Mali, the United Nations mission revealed Sunday. The MINUSMA statement read that the pull-out was completed "in an extremely tense and degraded security context putting in danger the lives of personnel". Before quitting the base and heading for Gao (the biggest town in northern Mali), MINUSMA said it had "destroyed, deactivated or put out of service equipment such as vehicles, munitions, generators and other items". The Malian army said it took over the Tessalit camp on Saturday. Before Tessalit, MINUSMA had transferred five other camps to the Malian authorities since August.
