Mauritanian troops yesterday staged all-out attacks on al-Qaeda’s north African wing, the key suspect in the kidnapping of five French and two African uranium workers, in Mali, security sources said.
“The clashes began on the Mauritania-Mali border, but then moved on to Malian territory at Hassissidi, about 100km north of Timbuktu,” a Malian security source said.
“We are presently in Malian territory and engaged in full combat,” a Mauritanian security source added.
PHOTO: AFP
However, both sources did not specify if the clashes were linked to the abductions.
Before dawn on Thursday, gunmen kidnapped an employee of the French nuclear group Areva and his wife, both French, and five others, including a Togolese and a Madagascan, from Satom, a subsidiary of construction giant Vinci, in Niger.
Security sources in Niger and Algeria said on Friday that the gunmen and their hostages had “crossed the border” between Niger and Mali and were in the Malian desert, security sources said.
The kidnappers carried out an audacious and apparently well-prepared operation, seizing the victims from their homes near Areva’s uranium mine at Arlit, 800km northeast of Niger’s capital, Niamey.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin decided to cut short his trip to Canada on Friday to return home to deal with the kidnapping crisis as a “precautionary” measure, he said.
The French foreign ministry said it had received no claim or ransom demand and could not draw a definitive conclusion about the kidnappers, despite concerns that they may be linked to the north African wing, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
However, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told Europe 1 radio that “one could imagine it’s the same group, at least the AQIM movement,” adding that he feared it was the same gang that had murdered a French hostage in July.
“But I can’t be certain, because no one has claimed responsibility,” he said.
French and Mauritanian soldiers launched an attack on a suspected al-Qaeda base in the Malian desert on July 22, killing seven militants but failing to find the elderly hostage who was later murdered.
AQIM later called for revenge against France and labeled French President Nicolas Sarkozy an “enemy of God.”
“To the enemy of Allah, Sarkozy, I say: You have missed your opportunity and opened the gates of trouble on your country,” an AQIM leader, Abu Anas al-Shanqiti, said in a statement posted on jihadist forums last month.
A Niger security official also pointed to AQIM, which has carried out several previous kidnappings of Westerners in the vast territory south of the Sahara stretching westwards from Mauritania across Mali and Niger.
The group has also previously moved its hostages to the Malian desert.
“Among the kidnappers, there is believed to be an element of the group led by Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, and the others were acting under orders,” said this source, who believed that Abou Zeid ordered the kidnappings.
Abou Zeid, an Algerian, is the head of the AQIM cell that in April took hostage 78-year-old French aid worker Michel Germaneau, whose execution was announced on July 25 after the failed French military rescue attempt.
A source close to Niger investigators said that the hostage takers had “inside people” in the security force protecting Arlit.
The brother of a hostage, Daniel Larribe, echoed him, saying his sibling had “fears which unfortunately have been confirmed.
“He often told me that his work in Niger was becoming more and more difficult,” he added.
Kouchner also said that the kidnappers “could be Tuaregs working to order” who would sell their hostages “to terrorists.”
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
RSS