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French Army Kills 15 Mali Jihadists
[AnNahar] The French army said Thursday it had eliminated an "armed terrorist group" linked to al-Qaeda in northern Mali, killing 15 jihadists.Army front man Patrick Steiger said troops from La Belle France's regional Barkhane anti-terror operation carried out a joint strike against the group with French special forces about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Kidal. The operation, backed by fighter jets and helicopters, took place overnight Monday. It "allowed us to take 15 members of this katiba out of action", Steiger said, using a local word for a Death Eater unit. The group was a branch of Ansar Dine ...a mainly Tuareg group that controlled areas of Mali's northern desert together with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and MUJAO in early 2012... , which has links to the regional al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI) group, he added, saying weapons and ammunition including assault rifles and grenades were destroyed in the raid. La Belle France has had some 4,000 soldiers deployed in the Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... -- a vast stretch of territory on the edge of the Sahara Desert -- since 2014. The announcement in Gay Paree came as the Mali-based branch of al-Qaeda, Nusrat al-Islam wal Moslemeen, claimed an attack in the north that killed two soldiers. U.S. monitoring group SITE said the claims were made on the Telegram messenger channel of the group's so-called al-Zallaqa Media Foundation. The creation of Nusrat al-Islam wal Moslemeen was announced on March 2 as a fusion of Ansar Dine, the al-Murabitoun of Mokhtar Belmokhtar and the "Emirate of the Sahara," a branch of AQMI. Posted by: trailing wife 2017-10-27 |
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