The United Kingdom will send 250 troops to the North African nation of Mali as part of a UN peacekeeping mission. The Ministry of Defense said that the troops had been authorized to join the UN mission in the city of Gao, in eastern Mali.
The deployment will join the UN’s 12,500 strong international force over a three-year mission to deliver peace to the country. The troops will bolster the fight against violent extremist scattered in Mali and the greater Sahel region.
Mali has been blighted by ethnic conflict since Tuareg separatists and allied militants, aligned with Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, took over vast areas of the country’s north, including its second city of Timbuktu, in 2012.
In 2014 Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania formed the G5 Sahel, or Sub-Saharan Africa, to improve co-operation on development and security in the region. A year later the G5 Sahel Joint Force was launched with France leading the counter-terrorism initiative.
French forces intervened in Mali in 2013, pushing back the separatist and Al Qaeda forces. Since then about 4,000 French troops have remained in the country alongside the peacekeepers.
