video transcript

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION). STORY: France plans to increase its troops in Mali to 2,500 in the days ahead and is working to speed up the deployment of West African troops for a campaign against Islamist rebels, the government said on Monday. A defense ministry spokesman told Reuters troops would be sent to bolster the 600 already deployed. Al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels launched a counter-offensive in Mali on Monday after four days of French air strikes on their northern strongholds, seizing the central town of Diabaly and promising to drag France into a brutal Afghanistan-style war. Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said EU foreign ministers would meet this week to try to accelerate the arrival of a training mission for the Malian army.