But the French presidency said France remains engaged in the Sahel region with all its partners, committed to stability and to the fight against terrorism.
A year ago the French military bombed a wedding ceremony at Bounty in Mali, killing 22 men, of whom 19 were civilians. This terrible blunder was widely covered by the media at the time. But abuses committed in the following weeks and in the same region by the Malian army passed unnoticed. As Rémi Carayol reports, it would have been hard for French troops, who were on the ground with their Malian colleagues as part of a wide-ranging counter-insurgency operation, not to have been aware of what was going on. Yet the French military have remained silent about the incidents.
France’s Barkhane force 'neutralised' Bah ag Moussa on Tuesday in an operation involving ground troops and helicopters, defence minister Parly said in a statement on Friday.
Armed forces minister Florence Parly has called on fellow EU governments to despatch special forces to the Sahel, to help curb militant attacks that have killed more than 100 Malian troops in recent weeks.
The two soldiers, taking part in France's Operation Barkhane in the West African country where it has deployed about 4,000 troops to contain jihadist groups operating in the region, died after their armoured vehicle ran over an explosive device near the town of Gao.
Two Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were killed and two French troops seriously wounded when a booby-trapped drone crashed to the ground near them north of the beseiged town of Mosul held by the Islamic State group group.
