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Paris, France: the top of ISIS within the Greater Sahara, who was wanted for deadly attacks on US soldiers and aid workers, has been killed in an operation by French troops Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi was “neutralised by French forces”, President Emmanuel Macron tweeted early Thursday.
“This is another major success in our fight against terrorist groups within the Sahel,” Macron said, without giving the situation or details of the operation Defence Minister Florence Parly said Sahrawi died following a strike by France’s Barkhane force, which battles jihadists within the Sahel It may be a decisive blow against this terrorist organization ,” she tweeted. “Our fight continues.”
The jihadist leader was behind the killing of French aid workers in 2020 and was also wanted by the us over a deadly 2017 attack on US troops in Niger Sahrawi in 2015 formed ISIS within the Greater Sahara (ISGS), which is blamed for many of the jihadist attacks in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso .
The flashpoint “tri-border” area is usually targeted by ISGS and therefore the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM) ISGS has administered deadly attacks targeting civilians and soldiers within the region.
The us had offered a $5 million reward for information on the whereabouts of Sahrawi, who was wanted over an October 4, 2017 attack in Niger that killed four US Special Forces and 4 Niger troops.
Aid workers killed
On August 9, 2020, in Niger, the ISGS head personally ordered the killing of six French aid workers and their Niger guides and drivers In late 2019, the group administered a series of large-scale attacks against military bases in Mali and Niger.
A former member of Western Sahara’s Polisario Front independence movement, Sahrawi joined Al-Qaeda within the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and had also co-led Mujao, a Malian Islamist group liable for kidnapping Spanish aid workers in Algeria and a gaggle of Algerian diplomats in Mali in 2012.
The French military has killed several high-ranking members of ISGS under its strategy of targeting jihadist leaders since the beginning of its military intervention in Mali in 2013.
In June this year, Macron announced a serious scaleback in France’s anti-jihadist Barkhane force within the Sahel after quite eight years of military presence within the vast region to refocus on counter-terrorism operations and supporting local forces.
“The nation is thinking tonight of all its heroes who died for France within the Sahel within the Serval and Barkhane operations, of the bereaved families, of all its wounded,” Macron added in another tweet after Sahrawi was killed Their sacrifice isn’t vainly . With our African, European and American partners, we’ll continue this fight The north of Mali fell under jihadist control in 2012 until they were pushed out of the cities by France’s military intervention in 2013 But Mali, an impoverished and landlocked nation home to a minimum of 20 ethnic groups, continues to battle jihadist attacks and intercommunal violence, which frequently spills over to neighbouring countries.
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