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Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Europe to Deploy Hundreds of Soldiers to Fight Terrorism in Mali


Mon 13 Jul 2020 | 07:00 PM
Yassmine Elsayed

This French Defense Minister Florence Parly announced that a joint EU special ops force formed to back the fight against extremists militias will be deployed in Mali on Wednesday.

Around 100 French and Estonian troops will initially make up the force dubbed Takuba, Parly told the online version of the daily La Croix on Sunday.

The first batch of this force will be joined by members of a second battalion of about 60 Czech soldiers in October, then about 150 Swedish soldiers in January 2021.

“Italy has just indicated its wish to join us,” she added.

According to United Nations statistics, jihadist and ethnic violence in Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso, killed at least 4,000 people in 2019.

As jihadist forces have weakened, however, they have increasingly resorted to the recruitment of minors, Parly said. “Despite all precautions taken, some (child soldiers) can be wounded or killed during fighting,” she warned.

The entire Sahel region is seeing ever more brazen attacks by extremist groups despite the beefing up of national armies and the deployment of 5,100 French anti-terrorism troops.

This comes as Mali is already witnessing a political turmoil as President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is facing a mounting wave of protests sparked by the outcome of a long-delayed parliamentary poll, but whose underlying causes include discontent over his handling of Mali's jihadist insurgency.

Mali's worried allies and neighbours have appealed for restraint and dialogue as the country's deepening political crisis spirals into bloodshed.

After three days of unrest in the capital Bamako, representatives of the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and West African bloc ECOWAS late Sunday voiced their concern.

Condemning "any form of violence as a means of crisis resolution," they attacked the use of lethal force by the security forces and urged dialogue, but warned that the arrest of protest leaders was an obstacle to this.