UK steps up military support in West Africa to combat world’s fastest growing Islamist-led insurgency

The United Kingdom has intensified military support in the West African sub region to combat the world’s fastest growing Islamist-led insurgency which has claimed countless of lives.

Major John House who leads a team of around 30 UK soldiers and Royal Marines has been training special forces from a number of West African nations in a US-led counter-terrorism exercise involving more than 1,600 troops.

According to Major House the training in Senegal with the focus on infantry skills and counter-terrorism operations was in Britain’s interests to get more involved in the region plagued by terrorist attacks.

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“If we don’t act we may find the problems getting closer to our door,” he said.

“The more they have a presence in the region, the more we can feel the effect back in the UK.”

Major House also revealed that later this year, 250 British soldiers will join a UN mission in Mali as the fight against terrorist extremism in the Sahel, a semi-arid stretch of land just south of the Sahara Desert, which has been a front-line in the war against Islamist militancy for almost a decade.

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