By Canadian Press

Canadian peacekeepers evacuated injured French counter-terror troops in Mali

Mar 26, 2019 | 2:42 AM

OTTAWA — Canadian peacekeepers were called upon to evacuate several wounded French soldiers in Mali earlier this month after their counter-terrorism patrol was ambushed by militants.

The previously unreported evacuation marked the first time the Canadians have been asked to help non-UN forces in the sprawling West African nation, where the French have been conducting counter-terror operations since 2014.

Canadian mission commander Col. Travis Morehen says the UN and France have agreed to help each other in extreme circumstances and that his peacekeepers ended up saving allied lives.

But Walter Dorn, a peacekeeping expert at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, worries such missions make peacekeepers targets for terrorists by blurring the line between peacekeeping and counter-terrorism.

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According to media reports, the French patrol was operating near Mali’s border with Niger when they were attacked by a group of militants suspected of having links to Islamic extremism.

Fifteen French soldiers were reportedly injured, two seriously, before the militants fled.

The Canadian Press