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Home Front: WoT

US indicts Mauritania national over terror attacks in Mali

2022-12-11

[DW] Fawaz Ould Ahmed is accused of being involved in multiple deadly attacks in Mali in 2015. He was already handed the death penalty
by a Malian court in 2020.

A Mauritanian man who received a death penalty in Mali for involvement in attacks that killed dozens including an American in 2015, was extradited to the United States to face an indictment related to the same crime, the US Justice Department said on Saturday.

Fawaz Ould Ahmed, a Mauritanian Islamist, also known as "Ibrahim 10," is accused of carrying out the March 2015 attack on the La Terrasse bar and restaurant in Bamamko that left five people dead.

He is also accused of criminal masterminding attacks on the Hotel Byblos in Sevare in August 2015 and the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako in November 2015 that left 13 and 20 people dead respectively.

Ahmed faces charges including the murder of US citizen Anita Ashok Datar and conspiracy to provide support to US-designated terrorist organizations al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Mourabitoun, according to the Justice Department.

REVENGE FOR CARTOONS
The now 44-year-old and two other jihadis involved in the attacks were sentenced to death by a Malian court in 2020.

During the trial, Ould Ahmed said he had carried out the attack on La Terrasse in Dire Revenge for cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed by La Belle France's Charlie Hebdo
...

A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...
magazine.

Born in Nouakchott in the late 1970s, Ould Ahmed was radicalized after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Link

Africa North

Al-Qaeda terrorists heap pressure on Mali's military, 18 toes up in coordinated attacks Wednesday

2022-07-28

[AFRICANEWS] Mali's armed forces said, Wednesday, murderous Moslems had simultaneously attacked a military camp located in the western town of Kalumba, and the camp in Sokolo.

The armed forces of Mali also denounced "terrorist infiltration attempts" in "the Hamadoun Bocary Barry camp" as well as an attempt at "the Air Force compound" in the city of Sevaré, central Mali.

In the last few days, the jihadists of the Sahel-based al-Qaeda nebula have stepped up the pressure on the Malian junta, with an unprecedented level of coordination of operations.

This comes at a time of deteriorating security context. The West African country has been plagued by war since 2012 and shaken by two coups d'état in two years (2020, 2021).The Group for the Support of Islam and Moslems (GSIM, JNIM in Arabic), affiliated to al-Qaeda, looks to extending its influence amid the confusion.

One of the lastest major event was the Friday attack on an army building in Kati, a garrison town 15km from Bamako and the heart of Mali's military apparatus where the president of the transitional authorities resides. One soldier was killed in the attack.

It is the first time that such a strategic and symbolic site is targetted. al-Qaeda jihadists had in recent years been targeting security posts in rural and peri-urban areas in Mali's north and centre.

STRATEGIC THREATS
It is a way to tell "(the authorities) that they can strike anywhere, as far away as possible" from their base, said a Malian observer of the security situation in Sévaré (centre).

The day before the Kati attack, six coordinated attacks were launched simultaneously in the centre and south of the country at 5am. A first. These southern regions (Sikasso, Koulikoro, Kayes), formerly spared by the foot soldiers of the jihad, are now a target.

Most of the attacks are claimed by the GSIM, created in 2017 by the merger of several factions: al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqmi, a pioneer of Sahelian jihad, born in Algeria in 2007), the groups 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...
of Malian Iyad Ag Ghali and al-Mourabitoune of the late Mokhtar Belmokhtar, and the Katiba Macina of Amadou Koufa

...Imperator of the Macina Liberation Front, one of the local groups within Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Moslemin (JNIM), the regional umbrella affiliated with Al Qaeda in North Africa. MLF draws from the cattle-herding Fulani
... a peculiarly brutal tribe of Moslem herdsmen infesting Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and probably other places that are light on law and order and heavy on tribal identity...
tribe extant in Mali, Niger, and Nigeria, which appeared in 2015 for the purpose of jihading against the farming tribes of Dogon and Bambara. Amadou was reported killed in a French raid, but he arose from the dead sometime around January 2019, to continue jihading as usual...

15 troops, 3 civilians killed in coordinated Mali attacks: Army

[AlAhram] At least 15 soldiers and three non-combatants were killed in coordinated "terrorist" attacks in Mali, the chronically unstable country's army said Wednesday, the latest deadly violence to rock the Sahel state.

In Kalumba, near the Mauritanian border, "the corpse count on the friendly side is 12, including three civilians from a road construction company", the army said in a statement.

The army corpse count in Sokolo, in central Mali, was six with 25 others maimed, five of them seriously.

A third attack, in centrally-located Mopti ended without casualties overnight.

Over the weekend, Mali's army said it had thwarted a new attack on a military camp in the centre of the country, two days after a deadly suicide kaboom in a strategic garrison town near the capital.

The Malian army has intensified its anti-jihadist operations in recent months, relying on what it describes as Russian instructors.

Despite a deteriorating security situation, the junta turned its back on La Belle France and its international partners, instead leaning on Russia to stem the threat posed by jihadists to Mali, as well as Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
and Niger.

Deutsche Welle adds:

This was the third attack in a week after al-Qaeda-linked militants set off two car bombs targeting Mali's main military base outside the capital, Bamako, on Friday, a day after a series of insurgent attacks.

In Wednesday's coordinated attacks, three military bases were targeted, according to the army statement.

The army said in a statement that 48 militants were killed in Sonkolo.

Link

Africa North

French army says senior Al-Qaeda leader killed in Mali

2022-03-08

[AlAhram] La Belle France's army said Monday that its anti-jihadist force in Mali had killed Yahia Djouadi, a "big shot" of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) responsible for finance and logistics.

La Belle France's army said Monday that its anti-jihadist force in Mali had killed Yahia Djouadi, a "big shot" of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) responsible for finance and logistics.

Djouadi, an Algerian also known as Abu Ammar al-Jazairi, was killed overnight from February 25 to 26 around (160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Timbuktu in central Mali, the army said in a statement.

His death "once again weakens al-Qaeda's governance" in Mali, it added, calling him "a major link in northern Mali and especially the Timbuktu area" to the Qaeda-aligned GSIM group.

A former "emir" of al-Qaeda's Libyan operations, Djouadi fled to Mali in 2019 and settled in the Timbuktu region, helping organise the group and coordinating supplies, financing and logistics, the army said.

It added that he was killed by ground forces supported by a Tiger attack helicopter and two drones.

La Belle France is preparing to redeploy some 2,400 troops away from Mali to other countries in the Sahel region
... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas...
facing cross-border jihadist insurgencies, after falling out with the military junta in Bamako.

While the pullout is set to stretch over six months, the army said that "operations continue against armed terrorist groups, especially against the top leaders of al-Qaeda, GSIM and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara

...he succulent fruit of the union of splinter factions from Mokhtar Bekmokhtar'sal-Mourabitunes and MUJAO. Once the dust had settled and the smell of gunsmoke had dissipated, they became the Islamic State in Mali, then adopted their present clever name. They are headed by Adnan Abu Walid Saharaoui. It operates along the borders of Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
, Niger, and Mali...
(ISGS) group."

French forces first intervened in Mali in 2013, but disputes between Gay Paree and Bamako since a 2020 coup have prompted the military government to turn to other allies like Russia's Wagner paramilitary group.

Even with international allies on the ground, the Malian state has struggled to reassert control of territory from the jihadist insurgency that began in the country's north in 2012 and has since spread to neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.

The fighting has claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

Deutsche Welle adds:

La Belle France has said forces from its Operation Barkhane contingent killed a senior regional al-Qaeda leader in an overnight raid near Timbuktu last week. Meanwhile,
...back at the shootout, Butch clutched at his other leg......
two UN peacekeepers have died in an explosive attack.

On Monday, two members of the UN's Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) force were killed in a roadside kaboom when the vehicle they were traveling in hit an improvised bomb.

"This morning, a supply convoy ... struck an improvised bomb north of Mopti," MINUSMA front man Olivier Salgado wrote on Twitter. Four other peacekeepers were maimed in the attack.

The nationalities of those killed and injured in the attack were not immediately released.

FUTURE OF UN PEACEKEEPING MISSION IN DOUBT
Western nations participating in the international mission have said the shifting situation on the ground may in fact compromise the 13,000-strong contingent, the annual mandate of which must be renewed this June. As with the French deployment to Mali, UN troops have been on the ground in the Sahel since 2013 in an effort to halt the advance of Islamic fighters who began seriously challenging governments and civilians in the region in 2012.

MINUSMA troops have been heavily dependent upon French air and medical support throughout their mission. La Belle France's withdrawal from Mali, as well as the recent coup, has caused contributing nations such as Germany, Sweden and Denmark to rethink their commitment to it.

Link

Africa North

IS Claims Killing of 4 Tunisia Soldiers, Beheading

2021-02-20

[AnNahar] The Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group has grabbed credit for the February 3 killing of four soldiers in a rugged region of central Tunisia, SITE Intelligence Group reported.

The US monitor of jihadist groups said late Thursday that the soldiers were killed in three blasts ignited by its fighters near Mount Mghila and that a "spy" was beheaded separately by IS.

The defence ministry announced the losses the same day, saying the soldiers in "a military unit tasked with carrying out a combing operation of Mount Mghila looking for terrorist elements were killed by a mine" explosion.

Mount Mghila, near the border with Algeria, is adjacent to Mount Chaambi, which is considered a hideout for jihadists.

Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi said the incident "will not stop us from pursuing our efforts to fight and defeat terrorism".

IS also said in its al-Naba digital newspaper that jihadists executed a spy for the army on December 20 near Mount Selloum in the Kasserine region, also central Tunisia.

Authorities said at the time that the victim was a 20-year-old man named Oqba al-Dhibi, identified on local radio as a shepherd tending his flock when he was attacked.

Tunisia has seen a surge in radical Islam since veteran president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in the country's 2011 revolution.

Dozens of members of the security forces have since been killed in jihadist attacks.

The army has been battling murderous Moslems in the Kasserine area since 2012.

Tunisia's central mountains are also a hideout for a local branch of jihadist group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Link

Africa North

20 U.N. Peacekeepers Wounded in Mali Attack

2021-02-11

[AnNahar] Around 20 United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
peacekeepers were maimed in an attack on their base in central Mali on Wednesday, a U.N. spokesperson said, offering a provisional toll.

Militants attacked a temporary base near Kerena, a village in the war-torn center of the Sahel state, at around 7 am.

Olivier Salgado, the front man for the U.N.'s 13,000-strong MINUSMA mission in Mali, said the position was "targeted by direct and indirect fire."

Mali has been struggling to contain a jihadist insurgency which first emerged in in the north of the country 2012, and has since spread to the center of the country and to neighboring Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of more have had to flee their homes.

Central Mali is one of the epicenters of the regional conflict, where attacks on soldiers and ethnic killings are common.

There are two groups a-jihading in Mali: Ansarul Islam, according to the latest source I’ve found, is an apparently unaffiliated Fulani group which emerged near the Mali border of Burkina Faso in December 2016, and JNIM (Group to Support Islam and Moslems), the unification of Ansar Dine, the Macina Liberation Front, and Al-Mourabitoun, which has sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. So one of them must have done it.

Link

Africa North

Algeria Seizes Nearly $100,000 Militants' Ransom Cash

2020-12-30

[AnNahar] Algeria's army has retrieved a "slice of the ransom" cash paid out to free hostages held by "terrorist groups" in the troubled Sahel region
... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas...
, the defense ministry has said.

Soldiers "recovered the sum of 80,000 euros" ($97,900) during an operation in Algeria's northeastern Jijel province, a statement issued late Monday said.

Algerian authorities use the term "terrorist" to describe armed Islamists who have been active in the country since the early 1990s, including members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

The defense ministry said the cash was an "instalment of the ransom" paid out in a controversial October agreement, where neighboring Mali released some 200 prisoners including murderous Moslem leaders to secure the release of four hostages, including French aid worker Sophie Petronin.

Algeria condemned the deal, and Prime Minister Abdelaziz Djerad said the payment of ransoms "undermines our counter-terrorism efforts".

Algiers said it had subsequently arrested several Death Eater fighters who had fled across the porous desert border from Mali.

Earlier this month, in the same Jijel province, three Islamists fighters and an Algerian soldier were killed in festivities, while on December 16, troops arrested a man they described as "dangerous terrorist", named Rezkane Ahcene.

One of the men later arrested in Algeria alleged that a ransom was paid totalling "millions" of euros.

Rumours of ransoms paid for the release of western hostages in the Sahel region are common but rarely confirmed, and La Belle France has denied any involvement in negotiations for the release of the hostages.

La Belle France has deployed over 5,000 troops across the arid Sahel region of Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger as part of its Operation Barkane mission fighting jihadist groups.

Three French soldiers were killed on Monday in Mali when their armoured vehicle struck an bomb, taking the total deaths to 47 since Gay Paree first intervened militarily in 2013.

Link

Africa North

Algeria Says Arrested Four Islamists, One Surrenders

2020-12-17

[AnNahar] Algerian security forces have arrested four Islamists, while another heavily armed krazed killer handed himself in, the defense ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

The Islamist who surrendered was in possession of a machine gun, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers and ammunition, in Tamanrasset, in the extreme south of the country near the border with Mali, the statement said.

The arrests take the number of people detained on suspicion of supporting "terrorist groups" to 17 across the country since the start of December, according to the ministry.

Algerian authorities use the term "terrorist" to describe armed Islamists who have been active in the country since the early 1990s.

On December 1, the ministry reported that three Islamists had been killed in festivities with the army in the northeastern province of Jijel, and said the following day that an Algerian soldier had been killed in festivities in the same area.

State media has reported that the army recently thwarted a plan by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to redeploy.

AQIM's leader Abdelmalik Droukdel

Link

Africa North

French Forces in Mali Kill Jihadist Commander

2020-11-14

[AnNahar] Troops with La Belle France's anti-jihadist force in Mali have killed the military commander of an al-Qaeda-aligned group linked to attacks in the region, Defence Minister Florence Parly said Friday.

Parly hailed the operation involving helicopters and ground troops that "neutralised" Ba Ag Moussa, the military commander of the Group to Support Islam and Moslems (GSIM).

...in Arabic Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Moslemin (JNIM), the regional umbrella affiliated with Al Qaeda in North Africa.

Ag Moussa, alias 'Bamoussa', is "believed to be responsible for several attacks against Malian and international forces," she said in a statement.

"He is considered one of the top military jihadists in Mali, in charge in particular of the training of new recruits."

In June, French forces in Mali killed Abdelmalik Droukdel

... aka Abdel Wadoud, was a regional leader of the GSPC for several years before becoming the group's supremo in 2004 following the death of then-leader Nabil Sahraoui. Under Abdel Wadoud's leadership the GSPC has sought to develop itself from a largely domestic entity into a larger player on the international terror stage. In September 2006 it was announced that the GSPC had joined forces with al-Qaeda and in January 2007 the group officially changed its name to the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb....
, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the rival jihadist group to GSIM.

La Belle France has more than 5,000 troops deployed in its anti-jihadist Barkhane force in the Sahel region
... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas...
Mali is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency that erupted in 2012 and has claimed thousands of military and civilian lives since.

Despite the presence of thousands of French and UN troops, the conflict has engulfed the centre of the country and spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
and Niger.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

About 10 dead in jihadist attack on Ivory Coast border post

2020-06-12

[AlAhram] Suspected jihadists attacked a frontier post on Ivory Coast's border with Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
overnight, killing around 10 people, security sources said Thursday.

It is the first jihadist assault on Ivorian soil since March 2016, when a raid on the southeastern beach resort of Grand-Bassam left 19 people dead.

The raid "targeted an Ivorian frontier post at Kafolo," where an anti-jihadist operation had just ended, one Ivorian source said, in an account confirmed by a Burkinabe source.

An Ivorian source said 12 people were killed -- 11 soldiers and a gendarme -- while six people were maimed and two were listed as missing.

Another Ivorian source put the toll at nine dead, while a Burkinabe source said 10 troops, a gendarme and an assailant had been killed, and two people were missing.

Security analysts have long worried that a jihadist revolt in the Sahel that began in Mali in 2012 is spreading towards coastal states on the Gulf of Guinea.

Ivory Coast shares a 550-kilometre (340-mile) border with Burkina Faso, where jihadist violence has claimed nearly 1,000 lives and forced 860,000 people from their homes over the past five years.

The latest attack began at around 3 am, and took place in the same zone of northeast Ivory Coast where the two countries last month launched a ground-breaking joint operation to flush out jihadists.

"Operation Comoe," named after a river that flows through the two countries, led to the death of eight suspected jihadists, the capture of 38 others and the destruction of a "terrorist base" at Alidougou in Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast army said on May 24.

The operation was launched after jihadists were spotted last year to the north of Ivory Coast's Comoe national park.

Security sources say they are jihadists operating in Burkina Faso who hole up in Ivory Coast.

The Grand-Bassam attack four years ago was claimed by al-Qaeda's North African affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

The Jerusalem Post adds:

Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso launched a joint military operation last month to the tackle expanding threat from Islamist jihadists linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Sahel region.

Link

Africa North

Al-Qaeda North Africa chief killed: What next for the region?

2020-06-07