Biodun.BBC: jihadist groups

Showing posts with label jihadist groups. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

U.N. says Malian forces executed 12 civilians at a market

June 26, 2018 22H:04 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Rashida Adjani and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Bamako

BAMAKO - Malian forces involved in the fight against Islamist militants in the West African nation executed 12 civilians in retaliation after a soldier was killed in an attack in May, the U.N. mission in Mali said on Tuesday.

Mali’s fight against jihadist groups in the center and north of the country has been marred by a series of alleged abuses, some of which the government has acknowledged.

Those abuses, as well as tit-for-tat attacks by rival ethnic groups, have fueled surging violence across vast swathes of Mali, raising doubts about the government’s ability to organize a presidential election scheduled for July 29.

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The U.N. mission in Mali, MINUSMA, said in a statement that its investigation had concluded that Malian troops from the G5 Sahel - a joint task force with Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania - “summarily and/or arbitrarily executed 12 civilians at the Boulkessy cattle market” on May 19.

It said that the report has been handed to Mali’s government and that Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the head of MINUSMA, “calls on the Malian authorities to ensure that the investigation underway is carried out as quickly as possible”.

There was no immediate comment from Malian authorities.

Mali’s government said last week that some of its soldiers were implicated in gross rights violations after the discovery of mass graves in central Mali. Rights groups have alleged widespread abuses, but the government has rejected those claims.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Lebanese PM says army to carry out operation at Syrian border

JULY 18, 2017 / 12H:28 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Nasra Ismail and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Beirut

BEIRUT - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Tuesday the army would carry out an operation in an area of the border with Syria that has been a base of operations for militants including jihadist groups.

Speaking in parliament, Hariri described the operation planned for the Juroud Arsal area as carefully studied, the National News Agency reported. The government had given the army the "freedom" to act, he added.

Juroud Arsal, a barren area in the mountains between Syria and Lebanon, has been a base of operations for insurgents fighting in the Syrian civil war, including jihadists from Islamic State and the group formerly known as the Nusra Front.

Speculation has been building that the powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah and the Syrian military are set to mount a major operation against the insurgents on the Syrian side of the frontier.

Earlier this month, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said time was running out for Syrian militants along the border near Arsal to reach deals with Syrian authorities, saying it was "high time to end the threat of militant groups in Arsal".

Hariri however said "there is no coordination between the Lebanese and Syrian armies".

A security source said the Lebanese army, a recipient of U.S. and British military aid, had increased its deployment in the Arsal area in the last 24 hours.

The source said the militants in the Juroud Arsal area were estimated to number around 3,000, two-thirds of them belonging to Islamic State or the group formerly known as the Nusra Front, and the remainder members of other rebel groups.

In 2014, the Arsal area was the scene of one of the most serious spillovers of the Syrian war into Lebanon, when jihadists briefly overran the town of Arsal.

The Iran-backed Shi'ite group Hezbollah has provided Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with crucial military support in the war, a role that has drawn heavy criticism from its Lebanese opponents including Hariri.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Nine Malian soldiers killed in central Mali attack

03 May 2017 - 05H00 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Rashida Adjani and Biodun Iginla, France24, Bamako, Mali

BAMAKO -

Nine Malian soldiers were killed and five wounded in an area regularly targeted by jihadist groups, as the commander of France's counter-terrorism force for the region said an operation on the Burkina Faso border was ongoing.

"A supply mission for the national armed forces fell into an ambush between Dogofri and Nampala. The initial toll is nine dead and five wounded," commerce minister and government spokesman Abdel Karim Konate said in a statement.

He condemned the "cowardly and barbaric act" and said "our commitment, as well as that of our partners, is to relentlessly pursue the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking" in Mali.

A Malian military source earlier said eight soldiers were killed and four wounded in the attack in the central region of Segou.

The troops' vehicle hit a mine and they were then ambushed by the group, a Malian security source told us at France24, recounting what is a familiar jihadist tactic.

Nampala, a garrison town near the Mauritanian border, has been targeted by several jihadist attacks.

Three Malian jihadist groups with previous Al-Qaeda links recently joined forces to create the "Group to Support Islam and Muslims" (GSIM), led by Iyad Ag Ghaly of Ansar Dine, and have also killed soldiers further east near the Burkina Faso border.

Troops from Operation Barkhane, a French counterterrorism operation, announced at the weekend they had killed or captured 20 jihadists in the forest of Foulsare near the border of Mali and Burkina Faso.

Barkhane's commander Francois-Xavier de Woillemont said in Ouagadougou the operation was not yet over, and the final goal of such missions was "to get rid of the terrorists" who "harass local people and stop them living a normal life."

It was the next step in operations undertaken in the zone "where we know that terrorists come to hide," he added.

Last July, 17 soldiers were killed in an attack on a military base in Nampala claimed by the Islamist organisation Ansar Dine.

A similar attack on the town in January 2015 claimed the lives of 11 Malian soldiers, who struggle to keep security in this sprawling west African nation despite the presence of French and United Nations troops.

Residents of Niono, to the south of Nampala, told us at France24 that they had seen reinforcements heading towards the area of Tuesday's attack.

The region where the soldiers were killed on Tuesday, Segou, is also rife with tensions between ethnic groups who dispute the use of land for farming and raising cattle.

Northern Mali fell to jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda in March 2012, and although these forces were driven out of key towns by a French-led military intervention the following year, the Islamists have now spread further south.