France confirmed on Saturday that one of the key leaders of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, had been killed in fighting with French-led forces in northern Mali.
Considered one of the most radical leaders in al-Qaeda’s north African branch, the 46-year-old is credited with having significantly expanded the terrorist group’s field of operation to Tunisia and Niger, and for kidnapping activities across the region.
French President Francois Hollande “confirms Abdelhamid Abou Zeid’s death with certainty during fighting led by the French army in the Ifoghas mountains in northern Mali in late February,” the Elysee Palace said in a statement.
“The elimination of one of the main leaders of AQIM marks an important stage in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel,” it added.
An adviser to Mali’s interim president Dioncounda Traore called the announcement of Abou Zeid’s death “excellent news.”
“It is a blow for terrorists,” he said.
Abou Zeid’s death was first announced on March 1 by Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno, whose army is fighting alongside French troops to secure the Ifoghas.
Two days later, the Chadian army also announced it had killed Algerian Islamist militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the other historic leader of al-Qaeda’s north African branch.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had said after fierce fighting in the Ifoghas late last month that DNA tests would be carried out to determine whether the two had in fact been killed.
However, France has still not confirmed the death of Belmokhtar, who split from al-Qaeda and masterminded a January raid on an Algerian gas plant that left 38 hostages dead.
A US official said on Saturday that Belmokhtar’s status was still “not clearly established.”
Abou Zeid had a reputation for being a severe, aloof character with an unflinching capacity for violence when required.
Born in Debdeb in Algeria, close to the border with Libya, Abou Zeid was a young activist in the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) that won the country’s first democratic elections in 1991, but was denied power.
He then disappeared underground for most of the 1990s.
He re-emerged spectacularly in 2003 as second in command of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, known by its French initials, GSPC, which kidnapped 32 foreigners in southern Algeria, and that would later, along with several other organizations, evolve into AQIM.
In June 2009, his men kidnapped British tourist Edwin Dyer. According to multiple witnesses, Abou Zeid personally beheaded him.
French aid worker Pierre Camatte, who was held by Abou Zeid’s henchmen for 89 days at the end of 2009, said the leader’s death would severely hamper AQIM.
“The organization has been decapitated,” he said.
Camatte met the man responsible for his kidnapping four times and recalls a distinctly cold character.
“The other kidnappers consulted him all the time, but he mixed very little with them,” the aid worker said.
Latterly, Abou Zeid — whose real name is Mohamed Ghdir according to Algerian court documents — was considered a deputy to AQIM’s “Saharan emir” Yahia Djouadi and commanded a katiba, or battalion, of fighters from Mauritania, Algeria and Mali that was known as Tareq Ibn Ziyad.
Mali descended into chaos in the wake of a coup in March last year, as al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels capitalized on the power vacuum to seize a Texas-sized triangle of desert territory in the north.
France launched its intervention in its former colony on Jan. 11 to stop the Islamists from advancing on the capital, Bamako.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS