African Union says it's deploying 3,000 troops to West Africa's Sahel region, where a nearly eight-year insurgency against several countries is under way
Senior AU official says decision taken because militant"threat is expanding" in Sahel, a semi-arid strip below Africa's Sahara desert.
The decision was made at the African Union summit earlier this month, Smail Chergui, head of the AU's Peace and Security Commission said, but the announcement was not made until a press conference on Thursday. G5 Sahel is a 5,000-member joint force already on the ground in the Sahel, and ECOWAS is the West African regional bloc.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen listens to African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat as they visit the Memorial wall of African Peacekeepers at the African Union headquarters' Peace and Security building in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 27, 2020. The bloodshed has escalated despite the presence of a 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali and rattled coastal countries to the south of the Sahel.
"The summit decided to deploy about 3,000 troops for a period of six months to work with the countries of the Sahel to deal with the menace that they are facing," Edward Xolisa Makaya, South Africa's ambassador to the AU, told AFP news agency. South Africa took over as AU chair at the summit and plans and to host an extraordinary AU summit on security issues in May.
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