French special forces killed two key jihadist leaders in a raid in Mali, one of whom has been linked to the kidnapping and execution of foreigners.
Amada Ag Hama, known as “Abdelkrim the Tuareg”, who is believed to have masterminded the kidnapping of two French journalists who were murdered in Mali in 2013, was one of those killed in the raid in northern Mali.
He was a leader of an Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) battalion and a former lieutenant of Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, one of the AQIM leaders killed fighting the French army in northern Mali in February 2013.
France sent troops into Mali two years ago when Islamist militants threatened the capital Bamako. Some 3,000 remain in the region combating terrorism.
The defence ministry said in a statement that the men were “two of the main leaders” of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Ansar Dine.
The ministry said that the operation “is a fresh blow to armed terrorist groups in the Sahel” after the French army killed Ahmed el Tilemsi, the leader of the Al-Murabitoun group in Mali who had been declared a “specially designated global terrorist” by the US State Department.
Mali suffered a coup in 2012. In the chaos that followed, Tuareg rebels seized control of the north, declaring independence, before being supplanted by Islamist militants.
Instability remains, despite the French intervention and the presence of the 11,000-strong UN peacekeeping force known as Minusma.
France has kept 1,000 troops in northern Mali since operation Serval ousted the Islamist rebels, as part of a wider counter-terrorism operation.
The new operation, nicknamed Barkhane, is taking place across Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad and involves a total 3,000 French troops.
