Bamako, MALI
France's armed forces said
Monday it had carried out a drone strike for the first time, during operations
in Mali at the weekend in which it said 40 "terrorists" were killed.
On Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron had
announced that French forces had "neutralised" 33 jihadists in the
central Malian region
of Mopti, in an operation that had started the previous night.
In a statement, the French military command said the drone strike
happened during a follow-up operation Saturday in which another seven jihadist
fighters were killed.
As French commandos were searching the combat zone in Ouagadou forest,
150 kilometres (90 miles) from the town of Mopti, "they were attacked by a
group of terrorists on motorbikes," the statement said.
A Reaper drone and a French Mirage 2000 patrol opened fire to support
the ground troops, it said.
"This is the first operational strike by an armed drone," the
statement said, confirming an earlier report published in the specialist blog
Le Mamouth.
The strike came just two days after the French army announced it had
finished testing the remotely-piloted drones for armed operations.
It has three drones, based near Niamey, the capital of Niger.
The operation at the weekend was in an area controlled by the Katiba
Macina, a ruthless Islamist group founded by radical Mopti preacher Amadou
Koufa.
Two Malian gendarmes who had been held hostage were freed, and French
troops seized a number of armed vehicles, motorbikes and weaponry,
"delivering a very heavy blow" to the jihadists, according to
Monday's statement.
France previously said it had killed 25 jihadists in two operations in
the Sahel this month.
Last month, 13 French soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash as they
hunted jihadists in the north of Mali -- the biggest single-day loss for the
French military in nearly four decades.
France has a 4,500-member force which has been fighting jihadists in the
fragile, sprawling Sahel since 2013. Forty-one soldiers have died. - Africa
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