Mali’s president urges support for foreigners battling Islamist insurgents

French troops entered the country in 2013 and operate alongside a 15,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping mission

Both sets of soldiers are deeply unpopular among Malians, who see them as incapable of providing adequate protection

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A French soldier during an operation in northern Burkina Faso, near the border with Mali. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:50pm, 1 Dec 2019Updated: 6:50pm, 1 Dec 2019

Mali’s president urged citizens to support foreign troops struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency he said threatens the country’s existence, after protests against the presence of French forces in the West African nation.

“These foreign troops are here because we asked them to, because we need their help,” Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said in a statement on public broadcaster ORTM on Saturday.

Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Mali’s president. Photo: DPA

The statement came less than a week after 13 French soldiers were killed in an accident involving two helicopters during an operation against Islamist militants in northern Mali. Following one of the worst losses of life for the French armed forces in three decades, protesters marched through the capital, Bamako, demanding France withdraw its forces.

“Mali’s at war, our unity is at stake,” Keita said. The war is “killing our civilians and our soldiers, both Malians and foreigners, who are here to help us. We have no reason to bite the hand of those that reach out.”

French troops entered Mali in 2013, pushing back a loose alliance of Tuareg separatist rebels and al-Qaeda-linked militants that had wrested control of the country’s north. Violence by affiliates of al-Qaeda and Islamic State is on the rise and spreading south to Mali’s more populous central region and across borders to Niger and Burkina Faso.