The governments of Mali and Nigeria announced on Saturday (16) military operations that killed dozens of people linked to Islamic terrorism, according to authorities in those countries.
In Nigeria, the Air Force said that “about 70 Iswap terrorists [Estado Islâmico na África Ocidental, na sigla em inglês] were killed or seriously injured” in the Lake Chad region, close to the northern border with Niger, which also took part in the operation.
The Lake Chad region is known for being a haven for Iswap guerrillas, which has been active since 2016. Along with rival group Boko Haram, the two factions have murdered more than 40,000 people in the last decade in violent acts that led to displacement. of 2 million people.
“Missions over the suspected localities […]carried out on April 13, 2022, detected a large number of terrorists, likely a logistical camp,” the Nigerian Air Force spokesperson said. nearby site, which left 70 people dead and injured, according to government figures.
Nigeria has been fighting the jihadist insurgency for 12 years and usually increases the intensity of its offensive at this time of year, before the rainy season. Since last year, Iswap has controlled most of the region after Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau was killed in fighting between these factions. The Nigerian government also faces heavily armed groups in the northwest of the country and separatist tensions in the southeast.
Mali also announced on Saturday that it had eliminated “a dozen terrorists” in two air strikes in the center of the country. The Armed Forces announced that they had carried out two air operations on Thursday, and that they had killed the alleged terrorists in a forest 10 kilometers from Moura, in the center of the country.
The bombings allowed “to neutralize some high-ranking members of the GSIM”, the acronym for the Support Group for Islam and Muslims, the main jihadist alliance in the region and linked to al-Qaeda, the government said.
In late March, the Malian army claimed to have killed 203 jihadists in Moura. An investigation by the NGO Human Rights Watch, however, found that the Armed Forces executed 300 people, including civilians, with the help of foreign fighters, according to a report by the group.
Neither version could be independently verified, while the UN mission in Mali unsuccessfully requested that a group of investigators be granted access to the region.
The deaths took place between March 27 and 31 in Moura, a rural community with around 10,000 inhabitants in the central region of the country, a place that has become a point of concentration for Islamic radicals who work in nearby nations. The government claims that the area is now a “terrorist fief”. Locals say these groups collect taxes and threaten civilians who refuse to adhere to sharia, Islamic law.
Mali’s transitional government, which took over the country after a 2020 military coup, is fighting rebels across the country with the help of soldiers from the private Russian Wagner group. Mali and Russia claim the men in the group are not mercenaries but trainers who help local troops with Russian equipment. France, which colonized Mali until 1960, has committed thousands of troops to military operations in the region for nearly a decade. This year, Paris said it would withdraw its men after bilateral relations deteriorated, in part because of the arrival of Russian troops.
