France hails progress in fight against jihadists in Sahel

BAMAKO: The fight against jihadists in Africa’s Sahel region is ‘achieving results’, France’s prime minister said in Mali Saturday, two days after French forces killed a top extremist leader.

“The anti-terrorist struggle in the Sahel requires determination, endurance and humility.

We are faced with a hard fight,” Edouard Philippe told reporters.

The prime minister arrived late Friday in the capital Bamako along with Defence Minister Florence Parly, on a visit to show ‘support’ for Mali, where some 4,500 French troops have been deployed since 2014 to retake the north of the country after it fell to jihadist fighters.

“We see that we are achieving results, we disrupt networks, I have no doubt that this presence has an impact”, he said.

The French military “will remain as long as is necessary”.

But he declined to comment in detail on the death in Mali on Thursday of Djamel Okacha, an Algerian commander for AlQaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Mali’s government said Friday that French armed forces killed Okacha in an air and ground ambush on a column of vehicles he was travelling in north of Timbuktu. His death ended a years-long hunt for a man accused of masterminding the kidnapping of Westerners in the Sahel region.

Okacha, a jihadist veteran known also as Yahya Abou El Hamame, was believed to be second in command of the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), also known as Nusrat al-Islam. — AFP