{{United States has agreed to fly tankers to refuel French jet fighters and bombers attacking al Qaeda-affiliated militants who have established a foothold in northern Mali, U.S. defense officials said on Saturday.}}<\/p>\n
The decision, in response to an earlier French request, expands U.S. involvement, which so far has been limited to sharing intelligence and providing airlift support to carry a French mechanized infantry unit to Mali.<\/p>\n
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told his French counterpart, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, about the U.S. decision to provide aerial refueling support during a phone call on Saturday, Pentagon spokesman George Little said in a statement.<\/p>\n
France intervened militarily in Mali two weeks ago to halt the advance of al Qaeda-affiliated militants who launched an offensive that threatened the Malian capital, Bamako, in the south of the country.<\/p>\n
For two weeks, French jets and helicopter gunships have been pursuing the retreating Islamists, attacking their vehicles, command posts and weapons depots. <\/p>\n
The aim is to block the advance of the rebels until forces from the ECOWAS grouping of West African nations can deploy to take over the fight.<\/p>\n
A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said three U.S. KC-135 tankers would provide aerial refueling as necessary to French aircraft, including tactical jets and bombers. <\/p>\n
The U.S. planes are stationed at Moron Air Base in Spain.<\/p>\n
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{{United States has agreed to fly tankers to refuel French jet fighters and bombers attacking al Qaeda-affiliated militants who have established a foothold in northern Mali, U.S. defense officials said on Saturday.}} The decision, in response to an earlier French request, expands U.S. involvement, which so far has been limited to sharing intelligence and providing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","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":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","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":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5436","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5436"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5436"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}