By RFIPosted on 10-01-2020Modified on 10-01-2020 at 08:02

In the Sahel, the Barkhane force has multiplied tactical successes in recent days, said the French General Staff on Thursday January 9, 2020. Since December 20, around 50 terrorists have been put out of action and more a dozen heavily armed motorcycles and vehicles were destroyed. Military successes that occur just before the Pau summit, which is to bring together, on Monday, January 13, the French president and the heads of state of the G5 Sahel.

For some experts, the situation in the Sahel last December was out of control. The chaos orchestrated by the jihadist groups , without the local states or the French intervention finding no answer, progressed inexorably. The setbacks, it is true, were accumulating for the armies present in this theater: on November 25, thirteen French soldiers died; In early December, the Nigerien army suffered its heaviest losses during the attack on the Inates camp, killing 71 people. Mali experienced a bloody fall with 140 soldiers killed.

Will the trend be reversed?

In recent weeks, however, the trend seems to have reversed. On December 20, the Barkhane force neutralized around 40 terrorists in the Mopti region , striking for the first time with a Reaper drone . Ten days later, a new operation in the same region made it possible to eliminate a dozen terrorists, motorcycles, heavily armed vehicles were seized or destroyed.

And on December 24, cooperation between the Burkinabé and French air forces made it possible to rout an armed terrorist group, a first. Colonel Frédéric Barbry, spokesman for the army staff, tells the story: " On December 24, in reaction to an attack on a Burkinabè military detachment in Arbinda , which is therefore located in the north of Burkina Faso , a patrol of two Mirage 2000Ds from Niamey air base, took off on alert in order to carry out, for the first time, a joint operation with the Burkinabè air forces. Radio contact with the Burkinabè Tucano plane was immediate and quickly established the tactical situation. "

" Close coordination "

Thus, continues Frédéric Barbry, “ the first Mirage fighter-bomber then carried out air support for the benefit of the camp and the ground troops, while the second aircraft looked for any suspicious activity around the area, which allowed to detect a group of ten enemy motorcycles. The Mirage 2000 then guided the Burkinabe plane towards the target so that it could neutralize it . This operation is a first in terms of cooperation between the French Mirage 2000Ds and the Burkinabé air force, a successful joint operation thanks to close coordination which has made it possible to be effective from the air between the French and Burkinabé crews . "

In recent days, the Barkhane force and its G5 Sahel allies (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad) have therefore managed to strike hard at the jihadist katibas . If the war is far from over, these successes nevertheless come just in time on the eve of the Pau summit.

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