North Africa’s Security
Security | Defense | Terrorism
Mali: Bamako Strikes Back as JNIM Expands Its Rule
Mali’s military launched air raids in Ségou just days after jihadists announced new sharia‑based restrictions and widened their blockade. The standoff now defines who controls the roads, fuel, and daily life in central Mali.
SECURITY & DEFENSE
Libya: Russia and Turkey signaling willingness to pull tiny number of their mercenaries from Libya
By Hui Min Neo and Shaun Tandon Hopes grew Wednesday for Libya's stability following a decade of bloodshed as Russia and Turkey reached a tentative plan in talks in Berlin to start withdrawing foreign mercenaries, officials said. The UN-sponsored conference -- the...
Burkina Faso: Mass casualty in ambush on policemen near Barsalogho
Around 10 policemen have been killed in an ambush by suspected jihadists in northern Burkina Faso and several more officers are missing, security sources told AFP on Tuesday. "On Monday evening, a group of police officers were targeted in an ambush by armed...
Sahel: Mali Church officials report kidnapping of Catholics in Mopti
Armed men in central Mali have abducted five Catholics, including an abbot, Church officials said Tuesday, in the latest kidnapping in the war-torn Sahel state. The group disappeared on Monday while travelling from the mostly Catholic area of Segue in the centre of...
Sahel: France announces arrest of ISGS’ Abou Dardar
By Didier Lauras with Amaury Hauchard in Bamako French forces in Mali have captured a man they describe as a "high-ranking fighter of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara" (ISGS), the French military said Wednesday. Dadi Ould Chouaib, also known as Abou Dardar, was...
Mali: Bomb blast in Timbuktu wounds four Malian civilians and six French soldiers
A suicide car bomber attacked French troops patrolling in central Mali on Monday, according to France's military, wounding six soldiers and four civilians including a child in the war-torn West African country. The French soldiers, who were travelling in a vehicle,...
Sahel: Burkina Faso army raids jihadist bases, kills nearly dozen militants
Burkina Faso soldiers killed 11 jihadists and destroyed three "terrorist" bases last week in security operations after the deadliest massacre in the country's six-year jihadist insurgency, the army said Monday. The operation between June 14 and 16 targeted areas in...
Sahel: Burkina Faso holds talks on security crisis
Burkina Faso on Thursday launched a two-day huddle gathering governing and opposition parties to discuss the country's worsening jihadist insurgency. The initiative, launched by President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, coincides with a surge of attacks in the...
Benin: Growing risk of Jihad contagion from the Sahel in West Africa’s Benin
Jihadists operating near Benin's borders with Burkina Faso and Niger may coopt intensifying communal conflicts in the country's north as they seek to extend their influence, a Dutch security report said on Thursday. AFP reports that several jihadist groups operate in...
Nigeria: Boko Haram chief Abubakar Shekau declared dead by rival ISWAP
By Aminu Abubskar When Nigeria's military claimed Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau had been badly wounded in an air strike 2016, the jihadist chief soon appeared in a video to deny another of the many reports of his impending death. Over the weekend, it was an audio...
Niger: Two Chinese workers kidnapped in Mbanga
Armed men have kidnapped two Chinese employees of a mining company in a volatile area near western Niger's borders with Mali and Burkina Faso, the regional governor said Monday. "Two Chinese nationals were kidnapped... by armed men in Mbanga" on Sunday night, the...
INSURGENCIES & TERRORISM
Sahel: Massacre in a Dogon village in Mali
Bamako, June 12, 2019 - A massacre at a village in central Mali that according to early estimates killed 95 people (read below) left 35 dead, the authorities said Wednesday, giving a final toll. Twenty-four of the dead were children, the government said in a statement...
Sahel: IED hits US military vehicle near Ouallam, Niger
Washington, June 9, 2019 - A US military vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device in Niger, site of a deadly jihadist attack on American forces in 2017, the military announced Sunday. The Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle activated the bomb...
Sudan: The butchers of Khartoum
Comment by Arezki Daoud | 6 June 2019: Taking place simultaneously with the Algerian protests, Sudan has gone from a country of hope to a complete disaster. Militants in both countries keep an eye on each others and see if they can borrow tactics that work. These...
Egypt: Army retaliates for Eid attack on checkpoint in North Sinai, kills 14 suspected militants
Cairo, June 6, 2019 - Egyptian security forces have killed 14 suspected militants during a raid carried out in the restive Sinai Peninsula in response to a deadly checkpoint attack, the authorities said. Wednesday's attack, claimed by the Islamic State group, left...
Egypt: Islamic State attacks army checkpoint in North Sinai, kills eight security agents
Cairo, June 5, 2019 - Militants killed eight Egyptian paramilitaries on Wednesday at a checkpoint in the Sinai Peninsula, centre of a long-running jihadist insurgency, security and medical sources said. "Eight killed and three wounded were transferred to El-Arish...
Libya: NOC warns of possible collapse of oil production amid intensifying civil war
Tripoli, June 3, 2019 - The head of Libya's National Oil Company warned Monday against a "collapse in production" stemming from conflict in the North African country. Oil production "could collapse at any moment", said NOC chairman Mustafa Sanalla, even as he cited...
Libya: Haftar troops unable to capture Tripoli, more violence ahead
Al-Swani, Libya, June 3, 2019 - As meat sizzled on a barbeque in a Tripoli suburb, Libyan fighters defending the capital from a military offensive rested during "the calm before the storm" on the front lines. "We don't deprive ourselves of anything," said a fighter...
Sahel: How Mali is descending into chaos
June 3, 2019 - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is warning of a "high risk" of atrocities in Mali in a report that calls for beefing up the UN peacekeeping presence in the strife-torn center of the country. In the report to the Security Council obtained by AFP,...
Morocco neutralizes another terror cell
Rabat, June 3, 2019 - Three suspects accused of belonging to a "terrorist cell" affiliated to the Islamic State group were arrested in Morocco on Monday, the country's anti-terror police said. The three men, aged between 26 and 28, were "in the process of preparing...
Niger Republic facing a Boko Haram onslaught
Comment by Arezki Daoud | 3 June 2019: Niger has now become the focal point of Boko Haram, plunging the Sahel into a more unstable region. With different insurgent and terror groups splitting and slicing the Sahel into their own fiefdoms, counter-terror there will...