3 Islamic State militants who led deadly 2017 ambush ID’d
Thomas Gibbons Neff and Helene Cooper WASHINGTON — The United States has identified at least three Islamic State leaders accused of planning and directing an ambush last 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 are also 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 onetime cattle herder and a senior lieutenant of a former affiliate of al-Qaida, when they left their base on the fateful mission in October that is now code-named Operation Desolate Bastion by the Pentagon.
THE FOUR SOLDIERS KILLED IN 2017 NIGER AMBUSH
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 D. Waldhauser, the head of the military’s Africa Command, told reporters this month.
Representatives from U.S. Special Operations Forces and the State Department — and, most likely, the CIA — met at a base in Niger last month to examine a web of intelligence surrounding the ambush.
They singled out high-ranking militants that led the group of fighters that attacked the team of U.S. soldiers, including Green Berets, and their Nigerien counterparts. But the officials at the meeting also identified roughly 20 low-level fighters, according to the documents that outline the discussion. The Pentagon has said that the U.S. team involved in the ambush killed 20 to 25 militants.
At the meeting, officials also 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. It is often joined by sympathetic villagers.