{"id":34276,"date":"2017-05-01T11:30:30","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T11:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/french-forces-kill-militants-in-mali-forest\/"},"modified":"2017-05-01T11:30:24","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T11:30:24","slug":"french-forces-kill-militants-in-mali-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/french-forces-kill-militants-in-mali-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"French forces kill militants in Mali forest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{France says its forces in West Africa have killed or captured more than 20 militants in a forest near Mali&#8217;s border with Burkina Faso.}<\/p>\n<p>A statement by its regional force said air and ground forces were involved. It did not identify the militant group.<\/p>\n<p>A French soldier was killed in the area earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>Mali suffers frequent attacks by Islamist militants despite a French military operation in 2013 to drive jihadists from northern cities.<\/p>\n<p>A French military spokesman said the militants had been targeted in the Foulsare forest, in the south-west of Gao province.<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday, Mali&#8217;s National Assembly voted to extend a state of emergency by six months in a bid to quell an upsurge in attacks.<\/p>\n<p>Violence has also intensified in neighbouring Burkina Faso.<\/p>\n<p>In December, 12 soldiers were killed in an attack by militants near Burkina Faso&#8217;s border with Mali.<\/p>\n<p>In January last year, 29 people, many of them foreigners, died in a attack on a hotel in the capital Ouagadougou.<\/p>\n<p>France, the former colonial power in Mali, has deployed about 4,000 soldiers in the region to fight extremists.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-19697 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_95851368_039253747.jpg\" alt=\"France has deployed about 4,000 soldiers in the region\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:BBC <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{France says its forces in West Africa have killed or captured more than 20 militants in a forest near Mali&#8217;s border with Burkina Faso.} A statement by its regional force said air and ground forces were involved. It did not identify the militant group. A French soldier was killed in the area earlier this month. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-34276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34276"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=34276"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=34276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}