MALI called at the United Nations on Tuesday night for international intervention in the failed state of Libya to stem the spread of terrorism.

“As long as a solution is not found to the Libyan crisis almost everything that we are doing in Mali and throughout the [sub-Saharan belt] Sahel more broadly will continue to be threatened,” Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop told the security council.

Libya has been torn apart by rival militias in the four years since the US-led Nato alliance helped Islamist rebels topple the government of Muammar Gadaffi.

Rival “governments” now rule from Tobruk in the east and the traditional capital of Tripoli, while war rages throughout the country.

The collapse of Libya’s Gadaffi-era army and the looting of weapons dumps resulted in a flow of armaments to terrorist groups across north Africa, prompting an al-Qaida-linked insurgency in Mali that has continued to destabilise the country despite a French invasion to crush it.