JAYFORCE

This is the story of the Battle for Gao, the biggest city in Northern Mali. The French used to rule the region. They left. Militant extremist factions like Al Qaeda moved in… banned music and booze and basically anything they call “sin” and instituted HARSH punishments for violators and martial law. It’s Jihad on steroids on steroids. It’s just wrong. The Malian-French alliance forces are trying to stop this; but can they? VICE went over to give us an up close look… and some answers.

It’s basically the first legitimate combat footage to come out of the war there…[I]nsurgents came to us: they slipped into Gao overnight on small boats and used suicide bombers to blast their way into government buildings. The French left the fighting to the Malian army for most of the day as a test of their combat abilities. Malian soldiers, while very brave, are almost completely untrained and had great difficulty fighting less than a dozen jihadists, some of whom were children. They fired wild bursts of automatic fire everywhere, destroying the city center. The Malians soon ran out of ammunition and had to wait for the French to show up and save the day.

– VICE

More video after the jump. Spoiler alert: No one wins…