33 terrorists killed in battle, one captured
Posted by News Express | 21 December 2019 | 1,255 times
•French President Macron
France killed 33 militants in Mali on
Saturday using attack helicopters, ground troops and a drone near the border
with Mauritania where a group linked to al Qaeda operates, the French army
said.
French President Emmanuel Macron
announced the operation in a speech to the French community in Ivory Coast’s main
city of Abidjan, describing it as a major success.
“This morning ... we were able to
neutralise 33 terrorists, take one prisoner and free two Malian gendarmes who
had been held hostage,” Macron said during the speech.
It was not the same area of Mali where
13 French soldiers died last month in a helicopter crash.
That was the biggest loss of French
troops in a single day since an attack in Beirut 36 years ago and raised
questions about the human cost to France of its six-year campaign against
Islamist insurgents in West Africa.
France, the former colonial power in
Mali and Ivory Coast, is the only Western country with a significant military
presence in Mali and the wider Sahel, an arid region of West Africa below the
Sahara desert.
French officials have expressed
frustration that some nations in the region have not done more to curb
criticism of its interventions. Paris is also vexed that some countries have
not fully implemented deals to bring more stability to areas of the Sahel with
little law and order.
French army command said the operation
took place overnight near the Mauritanian border about 150 km (90 miles)
northwest of the town of Mopti in Mali.
French forces aboard helicopters used
a drone to guide them to a target in a forest-covered zone where Katiba Macina,
a group linked to al Qaeda, operates, French army command said.
It was the same forest where France wrongly claimed it had killed Katiba Macina leader Amadou Koufa a year ago. A spokesman for the French army’s chief of staff declined to say at this stage whether Koufa was the target again this time.
Source: News Express
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