French forces eliminate AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukde
Thursday 06/August/2020 - 03:50 PM
shimaa Yahia
In the French forces’ biggest military victory in Africa, they managed to eliminate one of the most dangerous terrorists on the continent, Abdelmalek Droukdel, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) in Mali and Burkina Faso.
On Friday, June 5, French Defense Minister Florence Parly announced the elimination of the leader of the largest jihadist organizations in Africa’s Sahel region. “On June 3, the French military forces, with the support of partners, managed to eliminate the emir of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel, and many of his associates during an operation in northern Mali.
Who was Droukdel?
Abdelmalek Droukdel, also known as Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, was one of the most extremist terrorists in northern Mali. In 2001 he assumed the leadership of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which arose in Algeria following the cancellation of the elections that the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won in 1991. He took over the leadership of the terrorist organization after the killing of its previous emir, Abu Ibrahim Mustapha, in 2004.
According to security reports from the Algerian army, Droukdel was in contact with the jihadist Said Makhloufi in 1992, who persuaded him to go to the mountains a year after that to make explosives due to his specialization in chemistry. He then ran weapons manufacturing workshops in 1996 and was later assigned to head the Al-Quds Brigade, during which he supervised the forming and military training of the militants.
Under Droukdel’s leadership, many bloody operations took place in Africa’s Sahara and Sahel. He also participated in the war in Afghanistan against the former Soviet Union.
Droukdel’s group chased the Algerian army for many years before announcing the change of the name of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in 2004.
In October 2006, he masterminded the car bomb attack on the headquarters of the security forces in the towns of Dergana and Reghaia, east of Algiers, in addition to the December 2006 attack on a bus of foreign workers of an Algerian oil company near the municipality of Chaoui.
Droukdel was also responsible for several bloody attacks in Algeria on April 11, June 11 and December 11, 2007, in which hundreds of people were killed.
He was included in August 2007 on the UN Security Council's list of terrorism, and in 2012, the Algerian judiciary sentenced him to death in absentia, having been accused of killing, belonging to a terrorist organization, and using explosives in terrorist attacks against African and Malian joint forces in Algiers in April 2007, in which 22 people were killed and more than 200 others wounded.
As leader of AQIM, Droukdel played a major role in several deadly attacks, including the 2016 attack on a hotel in the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, leaving 30 dead and 150 injured, as well as the kidnapping of local and western citizens in several attacks in Tunisia, Niger and Mali.
Droukdel led all al-Qaeda groups in North Africa and the Sahel, including JNIM, one of the main terrorist groups operating in the Sahel, which killed 62 people while targeting the United Nations headquarters in the Algerian capital. It also claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Israeli embassy in Mauritania, in addition to kidnapping Austrian tourists on the Algerian-Tunisian border.
