The head of the Islamic State Group in the Greater Sahara (EIGS), Adnan Abou Walid Al-Sahraouia, was killed by French forces on the night of Wednesday, September 15th to Thursday, September 16th, announced Emmanuel Macron. “It’s a good new”, reacted Jean-Yves Le Drian, Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs, Thursday on franceinfo. “He was kind of enemy number one, he believes. This group is beheaded in your organization. “
The EIGS, created in 2015 by Adnan Abou Walid Al-Sahraoui, a former member of the Polisario Front, then of the Al-Qaeda jihadist movement in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), had been designated as “priority enemy” in the Sahel, during the summit in Pau (southwest France) in January 2020. “It was sort of, you might say, enemy number one”, Explain Jean-Yves Le Drian, remembering that this jihadist leader “ordered the murder of six humanitarian workers from the NGO Acted and their fellow Nigerians in Niger last August”.
“I think about them”, continues Jean-Yves Le Drian. “I went to Niger right after these murders. I was able to find their mates, talk to their families. I think today, they must have a lot of emotion and I greet them with a lot of love. ‘Empathy”., declares the minister.
“We must welcome this defeat of the Islamic State [au Grand Sahara] for the beheading of its leader “, also declares Jean-Yves Le Drian, who “notes that the reorganization of [l’opération militaire conduite par l’armée française] Barkhane on the main goal of counterterrorism is bearing fruit “. This “neutralization is not the first in this subsidiary Daech”, he emphasized.
According to him, “Now it is important, particularly in Niger, that state actors can retake the ground that was left by the Islamic State group, so that the state regains its function, so that daily life is resumed, so that local services are gifts”. “It’s a need that we also help”, he adds.
