Ground Zero: Mali - Insurgents vs. The Malian Army (Part 1)

Ground Zero: Mali was shot in Gao, Mali, on February 21, 2013. It's basically the first legitimate combat footage to come out of the war there. Normally the French ban journalists from the frontlines and film a sanitized version of the fighting themselves and then distribute it to the media. In this case, the insurgents 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. CREDITS Aris Roussinos — Producer/Camera Alison Severs — Associate Producer Anne Jolis — Field Associate Producer Marta Velasquez — Editor Daniel Bateman — Assistant Editor Eddy Moretti — Executive Producer Shane Smith — Executive Producer Suroosh Alvi — Executive Producer Vida Toombs —Executive Producer (UK) Alex Miller — Head of Content Al Brown — Supervising Producer Bree Horn — Production Manager Zoey Roberts — Production Coordinator Elektra Kotsoni — Content Coordinator Mike Horlock — Post Supervisor Ellie King — Post Coordinator Mimi Flemming — Post Coordinator Amy Ashworth — Music Supervisor Joel Kitzmiller — Art Direction Bex Rumble — Motion Graphics Grant Armour — Equipment Manager Check out the Best of VICE here: http://bit.ly/VICE-Best-Of Subscribe to VICE here! http://bit.ly/Subscribe-to-VICE Check out our full video catalog: http://bit.ly/VICE-Videos Videos, daily editorial and more: http://vice.com Like VICE on Facebook: http://fb.com/vice Follow VICE on Twitter: http://twitter.com/vice Read our tumblr: http://vicemag.tumblr.com