Operation Serval it had lost a few days earlier. French airstrikes appeared to stop the rebel advance to the south which prompted the intervention and destroyed an Ansar Dine command post near Konna. France asked the U.S. to speed up its contribution by sending drones to improve surveillance over the vast area of northern Mali. The Pentagon was reported to have studied the French request. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom announced that his country would lend logistical support to the operation. ECOWAS troops preparing to deploy to Mali also decided to move up their arrival date to January 14
Foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War received support from several non-state groups and organizations from across the Muslim World. As a significant part of Syria′s territory was from 2014 until October 2017 claimed by the Islamic State (ISIL), an entity internationally recognised as terrorist, a number of Western and other countries, most notably the U.S., Russia, Britain, and France, have participated in direct military action against ISIL in the territory of Syria. Russia is a military ally of Syria since 1956, and during the Syrian Civil War it continued supplying Assad's government with arms, sending military and technical advisers to train Syrian soldiers to use the