A French soldier stands inside a military helicopter as part of Operation Barkhane in Mali
Credit: Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA Pool
France has killed a top military commander in al-Qaeda’s North Africa wing in a major blow to jihadists in the restive Sahel region.
In a symbolic message to radical Islamists, France announced the “neutralisation” of Ba Ag Moussa on the fifth anniversary of the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris, which saw 130 people killed at the Bataclan concert hall, cafes and the national stadium.
It was the country’s worst ever peacetime atrocity.
Moussa, a former Malian army colonel also known as Bamoussa Diarra, was a right-hand man of Iyad Ag Ghali, the leader of Mali’s most prominent jihadi group, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).
JNIM has been behind multiple attacks on soldiers and civilians in Mali and neighbouring Burkina Faso.
French defence minister Florence Parly hailed the operation as “a major success in the fight against terrorism”, adding that Moussa was “one of the top military jihadists in Mali, in charge in particular of the training of new recruits”.
His death follows a series of operations in recent weeks that have seen soldiers from France’s 5,000-strong Operation Barkhane kill dozens of Islamist fighters in the Sahel region, which spans Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and Niger.
Surveillance drones helped identified Moussa’s truck in the Menaka region of eastern Mali, which was then targeted by helicopters and 15 French commandos sent to the scene.
All five people in the truck were killed after they ignored warning shots and fired on the soldiers, said French military spokesman Col. Frederic Barbry.
He described it as an act of "legitimate defence" and confirmed the bodies were handled "in conformity with international humanitarian law”. He declined to comment on whether other allied forces provided intelligence in the operation.
France's military strike in Mali could be seen as sending a message to the transitional government not to negotiate with "terrorists"
Credit: REUTERS
The death of Moussa, considered a terrorist by the UN and Washington, is seen as potentially even more significant than that of Abdelmalek Droukdel, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a rival jihadist group.
Mali is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency that erupted in 2012 and has since claimed thousands of military and civilian lives. French and UN troops have failed to stop the conflict from engulfing the centre of the country and spreading to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.
France is now hoping to cut back its military presence to make room for a stronger European commitment, say security forces.
Analysts say Ag Moussa enjoyed popularity within his ethnic Touareg community and that his death could be interpreted as a French message to the Malian government not to negotiate with terrorists.
Mali’s former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, who was ousted in a military coup in August, admitted to having had discussions with jihadist groups earlier this year. Last month, Moctar Ouane, head of Mali’s transitional government, insisted on the “need to offer dialogue with armed groups”.
“It’s clear that this blow to JNIM is a way of marking France’s opposition to any negotiations,” one Malian analyst told AFP.
François Hollande, the former French president who launched the military operation in Mali in 2013, said on Friday: “The idea that one can hold negotiations with the very same people who seek to strike us seems to me to make a mockery of commitments made at the start of the operation.”
French leaders have been paying their respects to those killed in the Paris attacks five years ago
Credit: BENOIT TESSIER/Reuters
The Malian strike came as Paris remembered the November 2015 attacks in which Islamist suicide bombers and gunmen killed 130.
Prime Minister Jean Castex and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo attended small memorial ceremonies, scaled down due to the coronavirus pandemic, outside the sites of the attacks in Paris, including the Stade de France, the bar Le Carillon and the restaurant Le Petit Cambodge.
"Today, five years on, Paris remembers," tweeted Ms Hidalgo, along with the French capital’s Latin motto of resilience, Fluctuat Nec Mergitur, which means "Tossed by the waves but not sunk".
13 novembre 2015 — 13 novembre 2020
Aujourd’hui, 5 ans après, Paris se souvient. #FluctuatNecMergitur pic.twitter.com/maQXTsfRHG
— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) November 13, 2020
France is currently on its highest alert level in the wake of three terror incidents in recent weeks: a knife attack outside the former offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly, the beheading of a teacher and a deadly stabbing spree at a Nice church.
In an interview with Le Figaro, the intelligence chiefs of the French equivalents of MI5 and MI6 said while France had been hit by 20 terror attacks since 2015, 19 others had failed since 2013 and 61 had been foiled by anti-terror forces.
They said al-Qaeda and the Islamic State were weakened but not dead, with low-level attack plots very hard to detect.
Both intelligence agencies have seen unprecedented reinforcements, they added, with the budget for the DGSI, the domestic intelligence agency, doubling over the course of five years. The DGSE, the external intelligence agency, had added 1,300 agents in the last decade bringing its staff to more than 7,000.
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