United Nations Security Council backs French intervention in West African country, as rebels launch counteroffensive.The French ambassador to the United Nations has said that his country launched a military intervention in Mali because it believed that the existence of the country was at stake.
Gerard Araud told a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council that France was responding to calls for help from the government of the former French colony.
A meeting of the 15-nation UN Security Council on Mali expressed unanimous “understanding and support” for the military intervention, Araud told reporters late on Monday.
Hours earlier, rebel fighters in Mali responded to French airstrikes and military action with a counter-offensive, overrunning the town of Diabaly, French and Malian authorities confirmed.
Araud said France had “no other choice” but to help the Malian government.
“We will defend [the capital] Bamako. We will not let the southern part of the country, with its 13 million inhabitants, fall to terrorist groups,” said Araud.
Francois Hollande, the French president, visited French troops stationed in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, confirming that a total of the currrent French military deployment consisted of 750 soldiers, but that number “will increase”.Also on Tuesday, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, said that he believed that the presence of foreign troops in Mali would not encourage al-Qaeda recruitment, Reuters news agency reported.Al-Qaeda-linked rebels overran the garrison village of Diabaly in central Mali, France’s defence minister confirmed in Paris on Monday.
