A German soldier with the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) walks past a Nigerian armored vehicle in Fafa, northeastern Mali, on April 26, 2017. Photo:  AFP.

U.N. mission head Mahamet Saleh Annadif in Somalia on October 25, 2013. Photo: AFP

Three United Nations peacekeeper and on Malian soldier were killed and several others were wounded on Friday in an attack by unidentified assailants in northeastern Mali, the UN mission there said.

The mission (MINUSMA) said the soldiers came under fire during a joint operation in the Menaka region near Mali’s border with Niger where raids by jihadist groups, some with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State, have spiked over the last year.

“I condemn in the strongest terms this attack that has once again befallen the MINUSMA force as well as the (Malian army),” U.N. mission head Mahamat Saleh Annadif said in a statement.

The mission did not specify the nationalities of the soldiers.

Jihadist groups have exploited the porous borders between Mali and neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso to expand their range of operations, alarming Western powers who fear the growing influence of Islamist radicalism in the region.

A 2013 French-led military intervention drove back militants who had seized control of Mali’s desert north a year earlier, but they have regrouped and now launch regular attacks against Malian soldiers, U.N. peacekeepers and civilians.