France wants to begin withdrawing its 4,000 soldiers from Mali from March
bbc.co.uk · 5 February 2013 · BBC
"Several hundred" Islamist militants have been killed since France launched an offensive in Mali last month, the French defence minister has said.
Jean-Yves Le Drian said they had been killed in airstrikes and direct combat with French troops.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said that France may begin pulling out of Mali as early as March.
In a newspaper interview, he said that "if everything goes as planned, the number of troops should diminish".
France has an estimated 4,000 troops in Mali and officials from multilateral institutions and dozens of countries have been meeting in Brussels to discuss how to replace them.
The defence minister said the last major town in northern Mali to remain in the hands of the rebels, Kidal, was now under French control.
Air attacks are continuing on suspected rebel hideouts north of the town.
(Excerpt, click the source link above to read full story)
Jean-Yves Le Drian said they had been killed in airstrikes and direct combat with French troops.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said that France may begin pulling out of Mali as early as March.
In a newspaper interview, he said that "if everything goes as planned, the number of troops should diminish".
France has an estimated 4,000 troops in Mali and officials from multilateral institutions and dozens of countries have been meeting in Brussels to discuss how to replace them.
The defence minister said the last major town in northern Mali to remain in the hands of the rebels, Kidal, was now under French control.
Air attacks are continuing on suspected rebel hideouts north of the town.
(Excerpt, click the source link above to read full story)
"if everything goes as planned, the number of troops should diminish".
Said by every military strategist about opposing troops EVER.
(Italics test)
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Got to be very careful posting html for now. I don't have a validate routine in place yet for HTML and if tags are left open it screws up the page formatting (like FR in the old days). Hoping to borrow John's routine for this if I can talk him out of it. If a post does get screwed up though, you can edit to fix it.
In time, militant Islamists will target Paris, and I'm not talking about taking over a school or a shopping mall.. Take it to the bank!
Howdy Enterprise!