(Paris) France has “neutralized” twenty jihadists in Niger during an operation involving air assets, said the French Army staff on Thursday.
An “operation of opportunity”, involving fighter jets, Reaper drones and Tiger combat helicopters, made it possible to engage in combat against a group of around forty jihadists in the area known as “the three borders”, between Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, indicated Colonel Pascal Ianni, spokesman for the staff.
PHOTO LUDOVIC MARIN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
A French Air Force Mirage 2000 aircraft takes off from an air base in N’Djamena, Chad, to participate in a mission in the Sahel region of Africa.
“About twenty” fighters were “neutralized” and the others were dispersed, he said during a press briefing. The French army never specifies whether a neutralized fighter is killed or wounded.
The strike took place 1.5 km from the Malian border, in Nigerien territory, “rather the usual area of the Islamic State in the greater Sahara (EIGS)”, said the spokesperson.
Paris undertook in June to reorganize its military system to fight jihadists in the Sahel, notably by leaving the northernmost bases in Mali (Kidal, Timbuktu and Tessalit) and by planning to reduce its personnel in the region by 2023. to 2,500-3,000 men, compared to more than 5,000 today.
The bases of Kidal and Tessalit have already been transferred to the Malian Armed Forces.
France, engaged in the region since 2013, regularly repeats that this reorganization is not synonymous with disengagement and that it remains determined to fight against the jihadist groups established there, affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group or with Al -Qaida.
But it intervenes in a context of tension between Mali and its former colonial power and historic partner, following a new coup d’état in Bamako in May.
This tension escalated in September when the Malian transitional prime minister, Choguel Kokalla Maïga, accused Paris of “abandonment in the air” because of this reorganization plan. Critics supposed to justify the possible recourse by Bamako to the Russian private paramilitary company Wagner, described as close to Russian President Vladimir Poutine.