The crash of two French military helicopters in Mali killed 13 French soldiers. The Elysee Palace said today in a statement of an „accident of the two helicopters in a combat operation against jihadists.“
President Emmanuel Macron expressed his condolences to the soldiers. The collision of the two military helicopters occurred as part of the UN mission „Barkhane“. France has deployed around 4,500 troops in the Sahel as part of this mission.
Clash in the evening
The two combat helicopters had collided last night, it said. Details of the accident were not communicated. Recently, a French soldier was killed by an explosive device in early November. The man had been traveling with an armored vehicle when the bomb exploded.
In Mali, the Austrian army is in action. The Armed Forces has been involved since 2013 in an EU training mission for the training of Malian armed forces (EUTM) – currently with 46 soldiers – and since 2016 in the UNO mission MINUSMA with a total of 15,000 people and two persons.
