The French and Malian armies have eliminated around 100 jihadists during a large-scale operation carried out jointly in January in central Mali, the Malian army said on Tuesday (January 26th), on the approach of a summit which will bring together in Chad in February Paris and its Sahel partners. “Around a hundred terrorists neutralized, around twenty captured and several motorcycles and war materials seized” during Operation “Eclipse”, carried out from January 2 to 20 by the Malian army and the French Barkhane force, said the Malian army. in a press release.
Paris said last week that around twenty jihadists were killed in mid-January by the French military and their local partners in northern Burkina Faso, in the so-called “three borders” area (Burkina, Mali, Niger).
More than 5,000 French soldiers in the Sahel
In Mali, it was a question of “driving the enemy out of its zones of refuge” in the Douentza-Hombori-Boulkessi sector, a region of sparse forests and bushes overhung by a rocky massif where elements of the Group are located. Support for Islam and Muslims (GSIM, or Jnim in Arabic), a jihadist alliance affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
Other groups, linked for their part to the Islamic State (IS) organization, are also present in the region. Paris is fighting the jihadists in the Sahel with 5,100 men, deployed since 2013 alongside the armies of the G5 Sahel (Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Niger). These armies, however, rarely claim such an important human toll in a single operation against groups which do not number in their hard core no more than a few thousand men.
Soldiers in the “heart of the anthill”
However, the sector remains dangerous for the Malian and French forces. At the end of December, three French soldiers were killed there by the explosion of an artisanal mine near Hombori, an attack claimed by the GSIM, while six Malian soldiers were killed last weekend in simultaneous night attacks against the two military camps in the area, in Boulkessy and Mondoro.
The attackers had been repulsed with the help of the French air force, a response which had left “around thirty dead on the terrorist side”, according to Bamako. “With Eclipse, (the soldiers) are really at the heart of the anthill,” said a Western diplomatic source in the Malian capital on Tuesday.
After integrating ex-rebels into the government, a ministerial delegation visited Kidal on Monday for the first time in months, a stronghold of former Tuareg independence rebels in the north of the country.
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
