OTTAWA — The Canadian military plans to send a team back to Mali next month to work with Romanian peacekeepers and minimize a gap in providing medical evacuations to United Nations and Malian forces and civilians.
Canadian peacekeepers will cease operations in Mali on Saturday and begin packing up their helicopters and equipment after more than a year in the sprawling West African country.
Yet while their Romanian replacements have started to arrive, with help from Canadian Forces transport aircraft, the Romanians aren’t expected to be ready to fly missions until the middle of October.
To ensure they are ready, Col. Travis Morehen, commander of the Canadian contingent, says some of his troops who returned home last month will be back for a week in September to teach their Romanian replacements the ropes.
The 12-month Canadian mission was scheduled to wrap up all operations at the end of July before the federal government extended medical evacuations another month to the end of August.
The UN had asked Canada to keep all its peacekeepers in Mali until the middle of October to prevent any gap between the end of the Canadian mission and the start of Romanian one.
The Canadian Press
The Canadian Press
