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Benin and Burkina Faso: French army kills 40 terrorists

2022-02-12T20:59:57.401Z


With a drone and a squadron: The French army killed 40 terrorists in the border area between Benin and Burkina Faso. They are said to have previously attacked rangers and soldiers in a national park.


A French soldier on duty

Photo: Daphne Benoit / AFP

French forces say they have killed 40 terrorists in the border area between the West African states of Benin and Burkina Faso.

As the French general staff announced on Saturday, they were killed by several attacks with a drone and a squadron on Thursday.

The terrorists had previously carried out an attack on rangers and Beninese soldiers in a national park in Benin.

France is heavily involved in operations against Islamist militias in West Africa, with a focus on Mali.

With a realignment of the French presence in the region and the end of Operation Barkhane, France intends to reduce its troop strength from around 5,100 to 2,500 to 3,000 troops in the long term.

The Bundeswehr has also stationed several hundred soldiers in Mali.

A number of armed groups are active in the states of the Sahel - an area that stretches south of the Sahara from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.

Some have sworn allegiance to the terrorist groups "Islamic State" (IS) or al-Qaeda.

The European Union is currently looking in particular at Mali, which is now governed by a military junta.

Federal Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht has called on the generals to quickly return to democracy.

"Once again: If elections are postponed by five years, then this is no basis for further German engagement," said the SPD politician after she postponed a trip to the Sahel region because of a corona case in her area and then in video switching with the had spoken to German emergency services in the African country.

»The rulers in Mali are not democratically legitimized.

You must now drive the democratization process forward quickly and credibly," Lambrecht said afterwards of the German Press Agency.

In 2013, the Bundestag passed a mandate for the deployment of the Bundeswehr in Mali for the first time.

The current mandate is valid until May 31, 2022. The Bundeswehr is involved in the country with a total of around 1,400 men and women in the EU training mission EUTM and the UN mission Minusma.

dop/dpa

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2022-02-12

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