Berlin has deployed about a thousand troops to Mali, mostly near the northern town of Gao. Their main task is to gather reconnaissance information for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali.
Germany considers that the conditions no longer exist for continued participation in the mission to which it has been contributing since 2013. The German commander in Mali, Colonel Heiko Ponzac, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper in an interview published today that the army had begun shipping about 1300,<> containers of materials loaded with equipment.