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| Africa North |
| French embassy attacker claims al Qaeda link, says Mali |
| 2011-01-07 |
| [Pak Daily Times] BAMAKO: The man who attacked the French embassy here by setting alight a small gas cylinder claims he is a member of the al Qaeda terror network and a Tunisian citizen, police said Thursday. Abdoulaye Sow, who runs the cop shoppe where the nabbed man was brought for questioning after Wednesday's attack, said the assailant did not have any identity documents with him and the claims could not be confirmed. The assault on the French diplomatic compound in Mali's capital was unsophisticated. It was carried out by a single man who police say fired several gunshots and set a gas cylinder alight and threw it, wounding two people and causing only minor damage to one of the embassy's outer gates. French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Christine Fages said she had no information on the motives of the attack but said one embassy official was lightly maimed. Police in Mali said two people were maimed in the attack. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb operates in the former French colony and has grabbed credit for the kidnapping last year of five French citizens and two others who worked at a French-owned uranium mine in neighbouring Niger. AQIM is believed to have taken the seven across the desert into neighbouring Mali. AQIM grew out of an insurgency movement in Algeria that merged with al Qaeda in 2006. It has since spread through the Sahara and the arid Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... , and in recent years has increasingly been targeting French interests. In 2009, a man wearing an boom belt tried to blow himself up in front of the French embassy in Nouakchott. Late last year, La Belle France rejected a reported demand from al Qaeda to negotiate with Osama bin Laden over the fate of five kidnapped Frenchies seized in Niger. The five, as well as two people from Togo and Madagascar. |
| Posted by:Fred |