BAMAKO, Mali
Mali's army said Saturday that it had killed "a dozen terrorists" including a French-Tunisian jihadist in air strikes in the centre of the Sahel nation.
The armed forces carried out
two strikes on Thursday "to neutralise a dozen terrorists in the forest of
Ganguel" about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the village of Moura, the
general staff said in a press release.
"These strikes made it
possible to neutralise some cadres of the GSIM," (the Group to Support
Islam and Muslims, the biggest jihadist alliance in the Sahel) it said,
"including Samir Al-Burhan, a Franco-Tunisian terrorist cadre".
The army said it acted on the
basis of precise information regarding a "group of terrorists" it
said had come "to boost the morale" of GSIM fighters and provide
support to them after their "serious setback at Moura".
Mali's military-dominated
government says it "neutralised" 203 jihadists in Moura at the end of
March, but witnesses interviewed by media and Human Rights Watch (HRW) say
soldiers actually killed scores of civilians with help from foreign fighters.
No photos or video to support
either the Malian authorities' or HRW's account have emerged from Moura since
then.
The UN mission in Mali has for
days been asking in vain to be allowed to send a team of investigators to the
area.
Ruled by a military junta
since August 2020, Mali has been in a political crisis since 2012.
The spread of jihadists from
the north of the vast, impoverished country has spilled into neighbouring
Burkina Faso and Niger and the conflict has become more complicated with
emergence of local militias and criminal gangs.
Thousands of soldiers and
civilians have been killed in the conflict, and hundreds of thousands have been
forced to flee their homes.
No comments:
Post a Comment