3 extremists ID’d in Niger ambush

WASHINGTON — The United States has identified at least three Islamic State leaders accused of planning and directing an ambush in October in Niger that killed four U.S. soldiers, officials said, locking the U.S. military in an additional and possibly lengthy campaign to hunt and kill members of a little-known extremist group in northwest Africa.

The group, known as ISIS in the Greater Sahara, claimed responsibility in January for the Oct. 4 attack. The group was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department two weeks ago.

One of the three militants who led the ambush, Doundoun Cheffou, is most likely alive, according to government documents that were described to The New York Times by two U.S. military officials who were not authorized to discuss them publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The other two militants — Tinka ag Almouner and Al Mahmoud ag Baye, the latter of whom is believed to have trailed the team of Americans until shortly before they were attacked — were killed in the ambush.

Two higher-ranking militants also are likely alive and connected to the attack, although it is unclear how, according to one of the military officials.

Cheffou’s whereabouts are unknown, according to the documents. The U.S. soldiers and Nigerien troops were searching for Cheffou, a one-time cattle herder and a senior lieutenant of a former affiliate of al-Qaida, when they left their base on the fateful mission in October.

In April, Nigerien officials told U.S. commanders that they had captured a suspect they believed might be Cheffou. “But

upon further scrutiny, it was determined it was not him,” Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the head of the military’s Africa Command, said this month.

Representatives from U.S. Special Operations Forces and the State Department met at a base in Niger last month to examine intelligence on the ambush.

At the meeting, officials discussed methods to help track the militants who participated in and helped orchestrate the ambush — an endeavor that could take years. The U.S. military and national intelligence agencies are still searching for the militants responsible for the Sept. 11, 2012, strike on diplomatic compounds in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

French and Nigerien security officials say ISIS in the Greater Sahara has 40 to 60 core members. The branch and its leader, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, sought the recognition of the Islamic State militant group in 2015 after breaking from Al-Mourabitoun, an al-Qaida splinter group, according to the State Department.

Cheffou has been connected to the kidnapping of an American aid worker, Jeffery Woodke, in Niger. In October, U.S. intelligence agencies tracked his location to the Niger-Mali border by a ping from his cellphone. Cheffou was gone by the time the special forces team arrived at his camp, but hours later he was coordinating the fated ambush, according to the documents.