The United Kingdom has deployed 300 troops to Mali as part of a the UN mission made up of over 14,000 peacekeepers from 56 countries aimed at supporting peace efforts, protect civilians and promote human rights in Africa's Sahel region, the UK Foreign Office announced on Thursday
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd December, 2020) The United Kingdom has deployed 300 troops to Mali as part of a the UN mission made up of over 14,000 peacekeepers from 56 countries aimed at supporting peace efforts, protect civilians and promote human rights in Africa's Sahel region, the UK Foreign Office announced on Thursday.
"This new deployment of 300 British troops to the UN Peacekeeping Mission in Mali is part of our ongoing work in the Sahel region to build stability, improve the humanitarian response and help protect innocent civilians from violence," Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, as quoted in the statement.
It also quoted the minister of defense, Ben Wallace, as saying that the deployment was a demonstration of UK's "firm commitment to peacekeeping and the importance we place on improving security in the Sahel by protecting local communities."
The main body of the UK troops, which were drawn from the Light Dragoons alongside the Royal Anglian Regiment and supported by specialist trades from across the armed forces, arrived in Mali on Wednesday, while the rest of the personnel will arrive on December 8.
The UK Task Force will be based in a camp named after Brigadier Ralph Alger Bagnold, the desert explorer and first Commanding Officer of the British Army's "Long Range Desert Group," the statement added.
According to the Foreign Office statement, alongside the new deployment of 300 troops, the UKs Ministry of Defense currently has three helicopters and 100 personnel supporting a French-led counter-terrorist mission in the same region.
The Sahel, which stretches from Senegal on the Atlantic coast, through parts of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Sudan to Eritrea on the Red Sea coast, is one of Africa's poorest and most fragile regions, with terrorist violence and conflict on the rise.
