French forces kill Al Qaeda leader in Islamic Maghreb

FRANCE: French forces claimed to have killed a leader of a militant group Al Qaeda leader, Algerian Abdelmalek Droukdel in the Islamic Maghreb.

 According to France’s defense minister Florence Parly, a banned outfit leader, Droukdel was killed on Thursday near the Algerian border, where the group has bases from which it has conducted attacks and abductions of Westerners in the sub-Saharan Sahel zone.

“Many close associates” of Droukdel — who commanded several affiliate militant groups across the lawless region — were also “neutralized”, Florence Parly added.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) emerged from a group started in the late 1990s by radical Algerian militants, who in 2007 pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

The group has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks on troops and civilians across the Sahel, including a 2016 attack on an upmarket hotel and restaurant in Burkina Faso, which killed 30 people, mainly Westerners.

France has deployed more than 5,000 troops to combat militant groups in the region — a largely lawless expanse stretching over Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, where drugs and arms flow through porous borders.

Northern Mali is the site of frequent clashes between rival armed groups, as well as a haven for militant activity. According to the United Nations, Droukdel was an explosives expert and manufactured devices that killed hundreds of civilians in attacks on public places.

In 2013, he involved in the bombings of a government building and offices of the UN’s refugee committee in Algiers that killed 26 people and wounded 177.

France also claimed to have captured a leader of the militant Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS) group, which carries out frequent attacks over Niger’s western borders.

“On May 19, French forces captured Mohamed el Mrabat, veteran jihadist in the Sahel region and an important cadre in EIGS”, Parly said on Twitter.

Les opérations contre l’État islamique au Grand Sahara, l’autre grande menace terroriste dans la région, se poursuivent également. Le 19 mai dernier, les forces armées françaises ont capturé Mohamed el Mrabat, vétéran du djihad au Sahel et cadre important de l’EIGS.

— Florence Parly (@florence_parly) June 5, 2020

 Operations against EIGS “the other great terrorist threat in the region” are continuing, said Parly.

According to reports, some 500 militant fighters had been killed or captured by French troops in the region in recent months, among them several leading figures including commanders and recruiters. Droukdel’s death is a symbolic coup for the French, a military source said.