www.france24.com<\/p>\n
West Africa’s arid Sahel<\/a> region has seen a rise in violence by militant<\/a> groups, some with links to al Qaeda<\/a> and Islamic State<\/a>, that is drawing an increasingly aggressive response from countries including France<\/a> and the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was a Mali<\/a>-based al Qaeda affiliate, Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), that claimed responsibility for a March 2 assault on the French Embassy and army headquarters in Burkina Faso<\/a>‘s capital that killed eight people.<\/p>\n Colonel Patrik Steiger said soldiers from France’s Barkhane force and Malian troops were on a reconnaissance mission 90 km (56 miles) south of Menaka on Sunday when they encountered several dozen Islamist fighters, some on motorcycles.<\/p>\n A number of Malian soldiers died in the ensuing gunbattle, Steiger said, without giving more details. No French troops were hurt.<\/p>\n Five countries – Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Mali and Mauritania – backed by France, launched a new taskforce last year to tackle Islamist militants in the region, to which international donors have committed half a billion dollars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" www.france24.com French and Malian troops killed about 30 Islamist insurgents during a gunbattle in a region near the border with Niger, where Islamic State are known to be active, the French army said on Thursday. West Africa’s arid Sahel region has seen a rise in violence by militant groups, some with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State, that is… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1535,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions\/1535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}