British troops tackling elephant poachers selling ivory to fund terror

British troops are being deployed to catch elephant poachers in Africa as part of the fight against terrorism.

UK soldiers have been stationed in Gabon to protect rare forest elephants from hunters who slaughter the animals for their ivory and use the profits to fund extremism across the continent.

The British Army assembled a squad of 16 elite servicemen after receiving an SOS call from authorities in the central African country, the Daily Mirror reported.

Poachers linked to jihadist terror group Boko Haram are thought to have butchered 25,000 forest elephants in one region of Gabon alone over the past 10 years, sometimes using children as mules to help export the ivory.

The animals' tusks trade at £65 for 1lb on the Asian black market, with extremists using the money to fund their activities across Africa.

British troops, predominantly from 2nd Battalion The Rifles, have already been deployed to train park rangers in poaching hotspots in Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Ethiopia over the past five years.

In the latest phase of the operation they trained 80 officers in Gabon, where unarmed rangers are forced to combat poaching gangs carrying rocket-propelled grenades and AK47s.

Christian Mbina, technical director of Gabon's parks, told the Mirror: “We’re convinced on all evidence we have that the money raised by poaching goes to fund terrorism."

"The big terror groups in Africa now live from piracy and poaching.”

Rangers have been trained in using weapons, arresting poachers, sealing crime scenes to gather evidence, and technology such as WhatsApp groups to help them communicate.

About 80 per cent of the forest elephants in Gabon’s Minkébé National Park, one of the largest wildlife preserves in Central Africa, are believed to have been slaughtered by poachers between 2004 and 2014.