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French forces kill senior jihadi in northern Mali | French forces kill senior jihadi in northern Mali |
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French forces in northern Mali have killed a senior commander of the al-Mourabitoun Islamist group who was wanted by the US, a defence ministry spokesman said on Thursday. | |
The US has offered a $5m (£3.2m) reward for information leading to the arrest of Ahmed al-Tilemsi, who took part in the 2011 kidnapping of two French nationals in Niger and of three aid workers in Algeria later that year. | |
Tilemsi was a founding member of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), which merged with fighters loyal to veteran Islamist leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar to form al-Mourabitoun last year. | |
“Last night, we launched an operation in the Gao region in coordination with Malian forces,” Colonel Gilles Jarron told reporters in Paris. He added that Tilemsi had been killed and a dozen other Islamists “neutralised”, but did not specify if that meant killed or arrested. | |
MUJWA – Belmokhtar’s men and members of al-Qaida’s north Africa arm, AQIM – formed a loose alliance of fighters that seized northern Mali’s desert regions in 2012. | |
The militants were scattered by a French offensive in January 2013 but France has kept about 3,200 troops in the Sahara-Sahel region as part of a counter-insurgency force. | |
An additional 200-400 special forces have a mandate to hunt down leaders of the Islamist groups, which have mounted a resurgence in recent months with a series of attacks that have killed dozens of UN peacekeepers in Mali. | |
The last of the French hostages held by the al-Qaida-linked militants was freed earlier this week, amid claims of a prisoner swap with his abductors. |