By Serge Daniel
2 hours ago // 24/1/2014
Bamako (AFP) - A French counter-terrorism offensive in
rebel-infested northern Mali ended on Friday with 11 Islamist militants
killed and a French soldier wounded, military sources inside the
operation told AFP.
The action came as Paris steps up its campaign
against armed groups linked to Al-Qaeda holed up in Mali's vast desert,
following the former French colony's recent return to democratic
government after a coup which plunged the country into chaos.
"The
French military operation in the Timbuktu region is completed. Eleven
terrorists were killed. A French soldier was wounded but his life is not
in danger," said an official from France's Operation Serval military
mission in its former colony.
A foreign source told AFP on
Thursday troops were targeting the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in
West Africa (MUJAO), the Signatories in Blood -- an armed unit founded
by fugitive jihadist commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar -- and fighters loyal
to slain warlord Abdelhamid Abou Zeid.
A Malian military source
confirmed the information, saying "the French have done a good job,
because the jihadists, notably from Libya, are reorganising to occupy
the region and dig in permanently".
The sources said military equipment and phones belonging to Islamist militants were seized by French troops.
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A French army convoy patrols in the desert on October 31, 2013, near the village of Bamba, between T …
The operation took place a few hundred kilometres (miles) north
of the desert caravan town of Timbuktu, according to a Malian security
source.
Algerians Abou Zeid and Belmokhtar were leaders of
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which, along with MUJAO and
other Islamist groups took advantage of a military coup in 2012 to
occupy northern Mali before being driven out by French-led troops.
Anniversary of massacre
Abou
Zeid was killed in fighting led by the French army in the far-northern
Ifoghas mountains in late February last year, while Belmokhtar remains
at large.
An African military source in MINUSMA, the United
Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali, confirmed the operations on
Thursday, while a local government source in Timbuktu told AFP "more
than 100 French soldiers" had headed north from the town.
Troops of the French-led Serval Operation in Mali patrol an area in Gao on October 16, 2013 (AFP Pho …
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke of the
operation when he was asked by a French television station on Thursday
to assess military activities in Mali over the past year.
He said that "not everything is finished, the terrorist risk in this part of Africa remains high".
"We will keep 1,000 soldiers who are carrying out counter-terrorism missions," he added.
"We have operations targeting groups rebuilding on two fronts, firstly around Timbuktu and then in the Ifoghas mountains."
Belmokhtar
split from AQIM last year and launched the Signatories in Blood,
masterminding a raid of Algeria's In Amenas gas plant in which 38
hostages were killed in a four-day siege.
Abou Zeid was credited
with having significantly expanded AQIM's field of operations to Tunisia
and Niger, and for kidnapping activities across the region.
Mali
has been the target of a series of attacks claimed by Islamist
insurgents since France launched its military intervention in January
last year.
The residual groups
of fighters are no longer able to carry out coordinated assaults, but
Malian soldiers are vulnerable to small-scale attacks, by Islamist
groups and also by separatist rebels from the country's Tuareg ethnic
group.
Flags were flown at
half mast in army barracks across Mali on Friday, according to a
statement from the Ministry of Defence, in commemoration of the two-year
anniversary of a mass killing by Tuareg separatists which came to be
known as the Massacre of Aguelhoc.
When
the northern town of Aguelhoc was taken on January 24 2012, more than
90 soldiers and civilians had their throats slit or were shot in summary
executions by the separatist Tuareg National Movement for the
Liberation of Azawad.
The
statement said special prayers for the dead were planned in the garrison
town of Kati, 15 kilometres northeast of Bamako, as well as religious
services on Sunday.
