EU governments agree on military training mission to Mali

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday that he would travel to Berlin in the next few hours to talk to his German counterpart about France's military campaign against Islamist rebels in Mali.

The hostage-takers in Algeria have demanded an end to France's Mali campaign.   

Le Drian told reporters there were now 1,400 French troops on the ground in Mali.

A battle between French soldiers and rebel fighters was ongoing in the town of Diabaly and likely to continue into Friday.

Earlier, European Union governments agreed on Thursday to go ahead with a plan to send hundreds of military personnel to train Malian government forces in fighting Islamist rebels, as a civil war Mali spilled across its borders, an EU diplomat said.   

Senior diplomats from the EU's 27 governments took a decision to set up the training mission, which was already in the planning in recent weeks, shortly before an emergency meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers in Brussels to discuss the crisis in the Sahara.   

"(Ambassadors) have agreed," said an EU diplomat.


REUTERS