PARIS (Dispatches) -- France’s army said Monday that its forces in Mali had killed Yahia Djouadi, a “senior leader” of Al-Qaeda in Maghreb (AQIM) responsible for finance and logistics.
Djouadi, an Algerian also known as Abu Ammar al-Jazairi, was killed overnight from February 25 to 26 around (160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Timbuktu in central Mali, the army said in a statement.
His death “once again weakens Al-Qaeda’s governance” in Mali, it added, calling him “a major link in northern Mali and especially the Timbuktu area” to the Qaeda-aligned GSIM group.
A former “emir” of Al-Qaeda’s Libyan operations, Djouadi fled to Mali in 2019 and settled in the Timbuktu region, helping organize the group and coordinating supplies, financing and logistics, the army said.
It added that he was killed by ground forces supported by a Tiger attack helicopter and two drones.
France is preparing to redeploy some 2,400 troops away from Mali to other countries in the Sahel region.
Despite foreign forces on the ground, the Malian state has struggled to reassert control of territory from the takfiri insurgency that began in the country’s north in 2012 and has since spread to neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso.
The fighting has claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
The withdrawal of French troops comes amid growing demonstrations against their presence in Mali.
Although France remains the only Western country with a significant military presence in the Sahel, its relationship with its former African colonies has grown increasingly tense in recent months amid rising anti-French sentiment among local people who believe French troops aid takfiri terrorists.
On Monday, a roadside bomb killed two UN peacekeeping troops in central Mali, the UN’s mission to the troubled Sahel country said.
The mission’s chief, El-Ghassim Wane, vigorously condemned the attack and called on the Malian authorities “to spare no effort” in identifying those behind it.
The 13,000-member mission is one of the UN’s biggest and most dangerous peacekeeping operations.
Its deployment began in 2013 to help shore up the fragile Sahel state in the face of takfiri attacks.
The insurgency, born in the north of the country, spread two years later to the volatile centre and then to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.
Sweden last week announced that it would withdraw its 220 soldiers from Mali a year earlier than usual.