French forces kill al-Qaeda’s North African commander Abdelmalek Droukdel in Mali
- Terror organisation’s AQIM affiliate has made millions of dollars abducting foreigners for ransom and made large swathes of region too dangerous for aid groups
- Droukdel fought in Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s and rose to prominence as top emir of main Algerian insurgency movement in 2004
French forces have killed the leader of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Algerian Abdelmalek Droukdel, in northern Mali, France’s defence minister said.
Droukdel was killed on Thursday near the Algerian border, where the group has bases from which it has carried out attacks and abductions of Westerners in the sub-Saharan Sahel zone, Defence Minister Florence Parly said on Friday.
“Many close associates” of Droukdel – who commanded several affiliate jihadist groups across the lawless region – were also “neutralised”, she added.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) emerged from a group started in the late 1990s by radical Algerian Islamists, who in 2007 pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
The group has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks on troops and civilians across the Sahel, including a 2016 attack on an upmarket hotel and restaurant in Burkina Faso, which killed 30 people, mainly Westerners.