A French armored vehicle in March 2019 drove near Hombori, a small town in the Mopti province of central Mali, where soldiers killed on Monday were operating.
Photo:
daphne benoit / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
PARIS – Three French soldiers were killed in Mali on Monday when their vehicle hit a bomb during operations on France’s anti-terrorist mission in the West African nation, the French government said.
France has more than 5,000 troops deployed in an area stretching thousands of miles from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Chad in the east. For the past seven years, forces have fought branches of the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and other militant groups, which roam isolated villages in the region and threaten government forces in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and elsewhere.
Soldiers killed on Monday were operating around the town of Hombori, a small town in Mali’s central province of Mopti, as part of the French military’s campaign Operation Barkhane against Islamist militants in the Sahel region of Africa, authorities said. They identified the soldiers as the Young Moors, Dorian Issakhanian and Quentin Pauchet. The three soldiers come from a military regiment based in the eastern French town of Thierville-sur-Meuse, they said.
Their deaths have killed at least 47 French soldiers during the current operation and the previous short operation, which began in 2013. This includes an accident in November 2019, when two French helicopters collided during a mission in the north. Mali, killing 13 soldiers.
The US military provided essential support to the French operation, including drone surveillance and other intelligence gathering activities. In 2017, Islamist militants killed four American soldiers based in Niger.
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