UK Forces Clear Mali This Time Off Notorious Daesh Operatives
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Alaina
- . May 16, 2021
- . Update: May 15, 2021 11:17 pm
Mali, the landlocked nation of West Africa has become the new place from where UK troops have seized a cache of Islamic State weapons recently. Things found included AK47 rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Seized from near the border of the Nile river, the cache has also seen the presence of camouflage clothing, radios, mobile phones and hundreds of litres of fuel. Apparently, IS extremists are known to harass locals and hide in their villages to protect themselves.
Almost of this equipment was recovered from a nearby village. The UK forces were a part of a peacekeeping mission that had entered West Africa in December 2020, in order to address the harassment being meted on villagers.
The IS extremists seem to have swam and escaped before the troops could catch any one of them. The battalion comprising less than 300 soldiers involved those from the Light Dragoons and Royal Anglian Regiment, supported by a specialist Royal Engineer search team as well.
A difficult and long operation was carried out in a sandstorm and temperatures above 50C. The battalion could act depending on reliable intelligence they had gathered while carrying out patrols. The UN Mission in Mali is made up of more than 14,000 peacekeepers from 56 different countries.
It has been described as the most dangerous peacekeeping mission in the world. Almost 250 UN soldiers have lost their lives there since 2013.
In the past, French soldiers are said to have engaged in firing and capture of Daesh and IS extremists. This was carried out through airstrikes that had neutralized 50 Al-Qaeda linked extremists. France has been trying to help the African continent to free itself from IS extremist harassment for a decade now.
French forces have previously carried out similar bombings using fighter jets as well as Tiger helicopters in the African region. In February 2019, French fighters struck a column of over three dozen pickup trucks and in July 2019, light aircrafts and attack helicopters targeted suspected insurgents who were hiding under trees. According to French intelligence gather since 2019, the Daesh, IS, Al-Qaeda extremist participants use various methods to survive in the villages of Mali. Their tactics include weapon trade, drug, motorcycle and fuel trafficking, cattle rustling, artisanal gold mining and poaching. Looting and extorting cattle, bikes and gold has come to become their financial lifeline. All this is required to helo their operatives to travel between the border areas of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The French troops have often monitored these movements by drones and target them time to time.
