French Drone Strike Kills Wanted Top ISIS Leader In Africa
LAGOS SEPTEMBER 17TH (NEWSRANGERS)-French officials announced overnight that their military forces had killed the top ISIS leader in Africa, a terrorist for whom the United States had offered a $5 million reward due to his connection to the deadly attack on a team of Green Berets in Niger four years ago.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Twitter that Adnan Abou Walid al-Sahrawi, the leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, was “neutralized by French forces.”
“This is another major success in our fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel,” Macron said of the region in northwest Africa.
The drone strike occurred in late August but al-Sahrawi’s death was confirmed this month, French and U.S. counterterrorism officials told ABC News.
Al-Sahrawi was wanted by the U.S. for leading the group of more than 100 militants responsible for attacking Operational Detachment-Alpha 3212, a team of soldiers from 3rd Special Forces Group on Oct. 4, 2017, leaving four Americans and at least six Nigerien soldiers dead outside the tiny village of Tongo Tongo.
The 2017 ambush is the subject of a four-year ABC News investigation and an ABC Documentaries film set for release on Hulu in November, “3212 UN-REDACTED: An Ambush In Africa. The Pentagon’s Betrayal.”
Macron did not explicitly say that France’s anti-insurgent Task Force Barkhane in Mali had been assisted by U.S. intelligence, but sources in Paris and in Africa confirmed that was the case. American intelligence had previously assisted in numerous raids carried out by French Special Forces in 2018 that killed many of the Tongo Tongo attackers and recovered American weapons and one vehicle from the Green Beret team attacked in 2017.
ABC News
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Posted by News Rangers
on Sep 17 2021. Filed under International, National.
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