5e RE: 2026 DIO Training in Malawi | French Foreign Legion Information

From May 10 to 22, 2026, an operational training detachment (DIO) of the 5th Foreign Regiment (5e RE), based on the French overseas island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, provided military training to members of the Malawi Defence Force.

The detachment, made up of personnel from the 5e RE and the Mayotte Naval Base, deployed to Malawi, a landlocked Southeast African country. There in Salima, a town on the shores of Lake Malawi, around thirty Malawian paratroopers underwent two weeks of intensive training covering hand-to-hand combat, assault rifle marksmanship, tactical urban combat, and combat first aid.

The mission was conducted as part of the ongoing military cooperation between the French Armed Forces of the Southern Indian Ocean Zone (FAZSOI), which oversee French military presence in the region, and the Malawi Defence Force. It continues a long tradition of similar DIO deployments previously carried out by the Foreign Legion Detachment in Mayotte (DLEM), which was reorganized and redesignated as the 5th Foreign Regiment in late 2024.

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