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| Africa North |
| Islamist militants attack African military base in Mali, at least six dead |
| 2018-07-01 |
| [AlAhram] Islamist holy warriors armed with rockets and explosives raided the headquarters of an African military taskforce in central Mali, leaving at least six people dead on Friday, a front man for the force said. Assailants driving a vehicle rigged with bombs attacked the compound in the town of Sevare as some exchanged gunfire with Malian troops and fought to get in, officials said. Pictures from the scene showed the charred remains of a vehicle, a crater and the battered walls of the buildings, which are used by the G5 Sahel, a regional force created last year to root out Islamist holy warriors in West Africa's semi-arid Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... A front man for the G5 force - which is made up of soldiers from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other... , Chad and Mauritania - said two soldiers and four assailants died in the attack. "The attackers fired rockets at the headquarters and some of them infiltrated the compound. There was an exchange of fire," defence ministry front man Boubacar Diallo told Rooters. A U.N. source in Sevare, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... , said that the compound was hit by a boom-mobile. Gunfire had died down by mid-afternoon, the source added. Extremism watchdog SITE, which monitors turban activity globally, said Al Qaeda's branch in Mali had reportedly grabbed credit for the attack and described it as a suicide kaboom. The attack comes a month before Mali's presidential election. Violence by Islamist holy warriors has proliferated in the sparsely-populated Sahel in recent years, with groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... using central and northern Mali as a launchpad for attacks across the region. Western powers, including La Belle France and the United States, have provided significant funding to the G5 in a bid to beat back the jihadists. But the force has been slow to get off the ground, hobbled by delays disbursing the money and coordinating among the five countries. The French defence ministry said in a report on Thursday that around 15 assailants were killed when a detachment of its forces, alongside Malian commandos, clashed with a group of around 20 holy warriors on June 22. It said the clash, which required helicopter support, led to the seizure or destruction of many materials including two pickups and six cycle of violences, munitions and heavy and light weapons. A separate U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA, declined to comment on the attack on the G5 compound Sahel anti-terror force vows to fight on after suicide kaboom on HQ [AlAhram] A five-nation African anti-terror task force vowed Saturday to press on in its battle against jihadists, the day after a suicide attack on the outfit's headquarters in Mali killed two soldiers and a civilian. Friday's attack by a bomber in a vehicle painted in UN colours destroyed the building's entrance wall. It was the first attack on the headquarters of the G5 force, set up with the backing of La Belle France in 2017 to roll back jihadist gunnies and criminal groups in the vast, unstable Sahel region. "The conditions of this force will improve," Mauritanian Foreign Minister Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said. "This shows our determination rather than an indication of any weakness." The French and Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... ian presidents condemned the attack and discussed the security situation in the Lake Chad area, the French leader's office said Saturday. "This demonstrates once again the importance of the vision of the heads of state to create this force which can respond to these difficulties," the foreign minister said in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott. The al-Qaeda-linked Support Group for Islam and Moslems, the main jihadist alliance in Africa's Sahel region, claimed the attack in a telephone call to the Mauritanian news agency al-Akhbar. The strike in the Malian town of Sevare came shortly after Friday prayers, a military source in the G5 Sahel force told AFP. Governor Sidi Alassane Toure said four suspects had been tossed in the calaboose Book 'im, Mahmoud! UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, who visited the Sevare headquarters last month, highlighted security shortcomings on several of the force's sites in Mali in a report published in May. "Poor conditions on and around the site represent an important security threat, and are delaying the deployment of the remaining soldiers," the report said. The strike came three days before a meeting in Nouakchott between French President Emmanuel Macron and the heads of the G5 Sahel states to discuss progress made by the force. The G5 Sahel aims to have a total of 5,000 troops from five nations — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, but has faced funding problems. It operates alongside La Belle France's 4,000 troops in the troubled "tri-border" area where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet, and alongside the UN's 12,000-strong MINUSMA peacekeeping operation in Mali. The G5 Sahel was scheduled to be fully mobilised by mid-2018, but its deployment has faced delays, equipment worries and accusations of human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... abuses. On Tuesday, the UN said Malian soldiers within the force had "summarily" executed 12 civilians in a market in central Mali in May in retaliation for the death of a soldier. La Belle France intervened militarily in Mali in 2013 to help government forces drive al-Qaeda-linked jihadists out of the north. But large tracts of the country remain lawless despite a peace accord signed with ethnic Tuareg leaders in mid-2015 aimed at isolating the jihadists. The violence has also spilled over into both Burkina Faso and Niger. |
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