UK troops have battled a sandstorm to seize a cache of weapons hidden by terrorists in Mali, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said on Saturday. Around 100 soldiers from the Light Dragoons and Royal Anglian Regiment found AK47 rifles, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, camouflage clothing, radios, mobile phones, and hundreds of litres of fuel during the operation. The mission took place in early May, shortly after suspected fighters of the so-called Islamic State in the Greater Sahel (ISGS) fled by swimming across the River Niger. Terrorists had been intimidating locals, extorting money, and assaulting people who refused to comply with their demands—meaning UK forces were able to respond to protect them under the U.N.’s peacekeeping mandate, the MoD said. The mission, which was executed in a village near the border of Niger, was the first “cordon and search” operation, acting on intelligence proactively gathered, carried out by U.N. forces …