Al-Qaeda warlord killed in Mali by French soldiers
Expert bomb maker Abdelmalek Droukdel and close collaborators died during major operation
THE most powerful leader of West Africa’s growing al-Qaeda insurgency was killed in Mali, according to the French military.
Abdelmalek Droukdel, a 50-year-old Algerian veteran of the Soviet-Afghanistan war, was one of the terror group’s most reliable and resilient allies.
Over the past 15 years he has been at the forefront of the anarchy slowly spreading across swathes of north and west Africa.
Jihadists under his command have invaded a sovereign nation and launched strikes, bombings and kidnappings from Tunisia and Ivory Coast to Burkina Faso and Benin.
Florence Parly, the French armed forces minister, announced his death on Twitter, late on Friday. “On June 3, the French armed forces, with the support of their partners, neutralised the emir al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel and several of his close collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali,” she said.
Parly did not disclose the exact location of the attack. However, experts have suggested that the operation had taken place in northern Mali a few miles from the town of Timiaouine in south-west Algeria.
Wassim Nasr, a French journalist and analyst, said that local sources and recordings indicated that seven to eight French helicopters took part in a major operation there on June 3.
A representative of US forces in Africa has said that America provided intelligence and aerial surveillance.
Al-Qaeda has not confirmed Droukdel’s death, so the announcement will be treated with some caution. In 2018, Parly said that French forces had “neutralised” Amadou Koufa, a jihadist who has stoked horrific ethnic violence in central Mali. Three months later, Kouffa appeared in a video mocking claims that he was dead.
However, if true, Droukdel’s death is a major symbolic blow for al-Qaeda.
Droukdel represents “one of the long-standing pillars of Algerian jihadism and its spread south”, says Andrew Lebovich from the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In the mid-2000s, Droukdel took control of a band of Algerian fighters known as the GSPC and joined forces with al-Qaeda to form al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Droukdel was an expert bombmaker and his devices are thought to have killed and maimed hundreds of African civilians.