Britain is to deploy 250 troops to Mali next year as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission
- Some 250 troops will form a Long Range Reconnaissance Task Group in Mali
- It is the world’s most dangerous peacekeeping mission since Afghanistan
- Penny Mordaunt flew out to announce the unit’s part in the peacekeeping force
Britain will deploy 250 troops to the war-torn African nation of Mali in the world’s most dangerous peacekeeping mission, the Defence Secretary announced yesterday.
They will form a new Long Range Reconnaissance Task Group for three years, defending West African locals from Islamist terror groups in lawless regions.
The unit will operate behind enemy lines in what United Nations commanders called the ‘tip of the spear’ for a peacekeeping force numbering more than 13,000.
Miss Mordaunt flew out to announce Britain’s most dangerous UN role since Afghanistan.
Some 250 British troops will form a new Long Range Reconnaissance Task Group for three years, defending West African locals from Islamist terror groups in lawless regions. Pictured, a general view of the French army base in Gao, nothern Mali in 2015
She said: ‘In one of the world’s poorest and most fragile regions it is right that we support some of world’s most vulnerable people and prioritise our humanitarian and security efforts in the Sahel.
‘UK service personnel will work with our partners in the region to help promote peace by combating the threat of violent extremism and protecting human rights in Mali.’
The largely Saharan nation has been in turmoil since Tuareg separatists and allied jihadists took control of more than half the country in a rebellion in 2012, prompting French forces to intervene to push them back the following year.
A 2015 peace deal signed by Mali’s government and separatist groups has failed to end the violence.
Penny Mordaunt flew out to announce Britain’s most dangerous UN role since Afghanistan
Islamists have also staged assaults on high-profile targets in the capital, Bamako, and in neighbouring Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.
French forces intervened in Mali in 2013 to drive back fighters who had hijacked a Tuareg uprising a year earlier, and some 4,000 French troops remain there.
The U.N. Security Council then deployed peacekeepers, which have been targets of a concerted guerrilla campaign.
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