Three escaped jihadist prisoners were killed in Mauritania during an operation to recapture them, the government said on Saturday.
A police officer died, and a fourth prisoner was detained, officials said.
The operation took place overnight on Friday in the rugged heartland mountainous area of Adrar, a security official said on condition of anonymity.
The four jihadists had escaped from a Nouakchott prison on Sunday last week.
Security forces “came under heavy fire, which led them to engage in combat with the terrorist elements,” the north African country’s defense and interior ministries said.
The government hailed a “quality operation” carried out by security forces in this immense desert country of 4.5 million inhabitants.
No information had been released on the whereabouts of the jihadists in recent days, nor on how they reached the north.
However, a security official said during the week that Ould Cheikh’s “excessively dangerous” escape plan had been “very well organized and planned for a long time.”
During the search for the fugitives, Internet service has been disrupted all week across the country, said NetBlocks, an organization that monitors this activity around the world, linking these disruptions to the hunt for them.
During the original escape, two guards were killed and two injured, the Mauritanian Ministry of the Interior and Decentralization said.
The escape was a rare event in a nation spared the insurgency sweeping through the Sahel.
According to a military official, two of the prisoners had been sentenced to death, while the other two were awaiting trial for membership of a terrorist organization.
One of the prisoners killed was Saleck Ould Cheikh, who had been on death row since 2011 for his part in a plot to assassinate former Mauritanian president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, a military official confirmed.
The death penalty has not been enforced in Mauritania since 1987.
Ould Cheikh had already escaped prison in December 2015 before being arrested in Guinea Bissau and sent back to Mauritania after three weeks on the run.
The second prisoner on death row participated in attacks on the army in the north of the country in 2005, the military official said.
Mauritania has not experienced an attack on its soil since 2011, the result of security and political efforts made since the 2000s to curb the jihadist threat. At the same time, jihadism was spreading to neighboring Mali, then across the Sahel.
The absence of attacks has fuelled suggestions a secret non-aggression pact exists between Nouakchott and the jihadists.
Washington claimed to have found documents in 2011 at the Pakistani hideout where former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed, listing an attempt at rapprochement between the group and the Mauritanian government in 2010. The government has denied this.
Mauritania was regularly targeted in the 2000s, including attacks and kidnappings.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS