Al-qaeda commander Abu Zeid killed by French forces in Mali
German parliament approves troops for Mali
ALGIERS, Feb 28, (Agencies): French forces in Mali have killed Abdelhamid Abu Zeid, a leading field commander of al Qaeda’s north Africa wing AQIM, Algerian Ennahar television reported on Thursday.
The station said 40 militants including Abu Zeid were killed in the region of Tigargara in northern Mali three days ago. A French Defence Ministry official declined to comment on the report. Algeria did not confirm the killing.
France launched a whirlwind assault to retake Mali’s vast northern desert region from AQIM and other Islamist rebels on Jan. 11 after a plea from Mali’s caretaker government. The military intervention dislodged the rebels from several main towns they had occupied and drove them back into desert wilds.
AQIM, which stands for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has earned tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments for Western hostages taken to its strongholds in northern Mali.
Abu Zeid has been regarded as one of AQIM’s most ruthless operators. He is believed to have executed British national Edwin Dyer in 2009 and a 78-year-old Frenchman, Michel Germaneau, in 2010. Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler, in an account of his kidnapping by another Islamist cell in the Sahara, recounted how Abou Zeid refused to give medication to two hostages suffering from dysentery, one of whom had been stung by a scorpion.
Meanwhile, a military spokesman says French forces are closing in on radical Islamic fighters in rugged desert terrain in northeastern Mali.
Col Thierry Burkhard says a roughly 25-square kilometer (15mile) zone in the Adrar des Ifoghas range near the Algerian border is the “center of gravity” in a new operation involving 1,200 French, 800 Chadian and an unspecified number of Malian troops.
Burkhard declined to provide details to reporters Thursday because the operation south of Tessalit was ongoing. He said French fighters had killed about 40 insurgents over the last week or so.
He said he believes al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb was active in the area - one of three militant groups that controlled northern Mali for 10 months before France’s Jan. 11 invasion sent them scurrying into rural areas.
Meanwhile the German parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly approved sending up to 330 German soldiers to Mali to participate in an EUled training mission and give logistical support to French troops.
The two missions, whose mandates are initially for one year, each won support in separate votes with a large majority in Germany’s Bundestag lower house of parliament, the chamber’s deputy president Wolfgang Thierse said.
Up to 180 German soldiers can now join the European Union Training Mission (EUTM) in Mali which has a 15-month mandate to shake up the ramshackle Malian army in its effort to fight Islamist rebels who last year seized control of the country’s vast arid north.
Forty of the German contingent will train Malian forces, while a further 40 will act as medical support staff, and the other 100 will be available to provide logistical and administrative support in areas such as water and energy supplies.