ABIDJAN/BAMAKO
French forces killed 33 Islamist militants in Mali on
Saturday using attack helicopters, ground troops and a drone, near the border
with Mauritania where a group linked to al Qaeda operates, French authorities
said.
The raid about 150 km
(90 miles) northwest of Mopti in Mali targeted the same forest area where
France wrongly claimed last year it had killed Amadou Koufa, one of the most
senior Islamist militants being hunted by French forces in the Sahel.
A
spokesman for the French army’s chief of staff declined to say at this stage
whether Koufa was the target this time.
French
President Emmanuel Macron announced the operation in a speech to the French
community in Ivory Coast’s main city of Abidjan, describing it as a major
success.
“This
morning ... we were able to neutralise 33 terrorists, take one prisoner and
free two Malian gendarmes who had been held hostage,” Macron said, a day after
visiting French troops stationed in Ivory Coast.
The
operation took place in a different part of Mali to where 13 French soldiers
died last month in a helicopter crash while tracking a militant group suspected
of being linked to Islamic State.
That
was the biggest loss of French troops in a day since an attack in Beirut 36
years ago and raised questions about the human cost to France of its six-year
campaign against Islamist insurgents in West Africa.
In
Saturday’s raid, soldiers aboard Tiger attack helicopters used a Reaper drone
to guide them to the forest area where Koufa’s group Katiba Macina operates,
French army command said.
Koufa
is one of the top deputies to Iyad Ag Ghali, the leader of Mali’s most
prominent jihadi group, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), which has
repeatedly attacked soldiers and civilians in Mali and neighbouring Burkina
Faso.
The
Malian authorities welcomed the success of the raid. “Happy that the fight
against terrorism is taking a more offensive turn,” said government spokesman
Yaya Sangare in a message to Reuters. “I salute this operation, which must
continue.”
The
United Nations, France and the United States have poured billions of dollars
into stabilising the Sahel, an arid region of West Africa south of the Sahara
desert, but with little success.
France,
the former colonial power in a number of West African countries, has more than
4,000 soldiers in the region in its counter-terrorism task force Operation
Barkhane. The United Nations has a 13,000-strong peacekeeping operation in
Mali.
French
officials have expressed frustration that some countries in the region have not
done more to curb criticism of French operations. Paris is also vexed that some
countries have not fully implemented deals to bring more stability to areas of
the Sahel with little law and order.
On
Dec. 10, Islamist militants killed 71 soldiers at a remote military camp in
Niger near the border with Mali - an attack claimed by a West African branch of
Islamic State.
France
announced separately this week that its Reaper drones deployed in the Sahel
would now have the capacity to carry weapons, although the army command said
the drone used in Saturday’s operation had not been armed. - Reuters
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