Relatives gather by the coffins of nine UN soldiers from Niger killed in Mali this month. Source: AFP

It’s a region overrun by Islamic militants baying for blood — but it is not Iraq or Syria.

It’s northern Mali in West Africa.

Malian foreign affairs minister Abdoulaye Diop begged the UN to take urgent action. Source: AFP

French forces won back the territory from al-Qaeda in early 2013 with more than 4500 soldiers in the region, according to Foreign Policy.

But now that France has withdrawn most of its troops, Mali has become the deadliest place on the planet.

In the past 15 months alone, a floundering UN peacekeeping mission has suffered 31 deaths and 91 injuries.

Now the United Nations’ Mali envoy Bert Koenders is leaving after less than a year in the role to become the Netherlands’ foreign minister.

As well as rebellion and corruption, Mali faces the looming threat of Ebola. Source: AP

He warned that the region ran “the risk of becoming the destination of hordes of terrorists”.

UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous promised that combat helicopters and drones would be sent to Mali in the coming months as it faces ambushes, rockets, mortar shells and suicide attacks.

But in the meantime, the neglected area is descending into chaos, with the spectre of Ebola also looming large in the country, which borders the epicentre of the viral epidemic, Guinea.

The UN mission’s website says Mali “has been confronted by a profound crisis with serious political, security, socio-economic, humanitarian and human rights consequences.”

Thousands marched in Malian capital Bamako last month to demand peace and protest calls for independence in the north by Touareg rebels. Source: AFP

It attributed the problem to years of weak infrastructure and governance, fragile social cohesion and deep-seated feelings among communities in the north of being neglected, marginalised and unfairly treated.

Mali has also faced problems with environmental degradation, climate change and economic shocks.

“These conditions were exacerbated by more recent factors of instability, including corruption, nepotism, abuse of power, internal strife and deteriorating capacity of the national army,” the UN reports.

Malian troops working with French forces to battle radical Islamic rebels in the northern city of Gao in February 2013. Source: AP

Al-Qaeda took control of northern Mali in 2012 after a coup sparked by Tuareg rebels in the country’s vast desert.

The extremists sidelined the Tuaregs and had begun to advance on the capital, Bamako, when French and African troops intervened in January 2013.

Minusma, a 9000-strong UN peacekeeping mission, took over in July 2013, but has faced continuing insurgent attacks.

With French forces leaving the area, the UN is struggling to cope.

Will the world take notice of Mali’s predicament?