UK military gears up for deployment in Mali

Britain is significantly stepping up its military support in West Africa to help combat the world’s fastest growing Islamist-led insurgency.

Over the past month, British troops have been helping train local forces to fight extremism in the Sahel.

The region, a semi-arid stretch of land just south of the Sahara Desert, has been a frontline in the war against Islamist militancy for almost a decade.

Later this year, 250 British soldiers will join a UN mission in Mali and will mount 30-day land operations deep into jihadist territory.

It has been described as the most dangerous peacekeeping operation in the world.

The deployment is Britain’s first significant return to an active war zone since the end of Operation Herrick in Afghanistan more than five years ago, a mission that claimed 454 British lives.

The planned deployment comes amid US warnings that the threat posed by jihadist groups loyal to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Sahel, a vast region of arid scrubland south of the Sahara Desert, could start to threaten Europe as well as the wider region.

The French currently have 4,500 troops in the area but after seven years of fighting they are losing ground.

Read more via BBC/The Telegraph