Trafficking in the Sahel: Muzzling the illicit arms trade (Feature by UN News)

Bamako, Mali (PANA) - Shoppers in Mali’s Gao, Timbuktu, and Ménaka regions in Mali can snap up AK-pattern assault rifles for $750 and cartridges for 70 cents apiece, from locally handcrafted pistols to smuggled French and Turkish machine guns, as a dizzying array of illegal weaponry dots market stalls across the Sahel, a 6,000-kilometre-wide belt in the middle of Africa