Moktar Belmoktar said to be associated with the seizure of the Amenas gas field in Algeria. The Algerian government has attempted to retake the installation leaving approximately 50 people dead., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
French, Niger troops kill Islamists holding out at Niger base
Fri, May 24 2013
By Abdoulaye Massalatchi
NIAMEY (Reuters) - French special forces and Niger troops shot dead on Friday the last two Islamists involved in a twin attack on a military base and a French uranium mine in Niger claimed by the mastermind of January's mass hostage-taking in Algeria.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a one-eyed veteran of al Qaeda's North African operations, said in a statement that his Mulathameen brigade organised Thursday's raids with the MUJWA militant group in retaliation for Niger's role in a French-led war on Islamists in Mali.
The coordinated dawn attacks killed 24 soldiers and one civilian and damaged machinery at Areva's (AREVA.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Somair mine in the remote town of Arlit, a key supplier of uranium to France's nuclear power program.
The attacks raised fears that Mali's conflict could spread to neighboring West African states and brought an Islamist threat closer to France's economic interests.
Niger's government said French special forces had helped to end the resistance of two Islamists fighters who were holed up inside the army barracks in the desert town of Agadez early on Friday.
"Niger is more determined that ever to fight terrorism in all its forms," the government spokesman, Justice Minister Amadou Marou, told state television.
He said a total of 10 Islamists died in the attacks: eight in Agadez and two in Arlit. "The government reassures national and international opinion that every step is being taken to protect people and property across the whole of the country."
Two military cadets were killed by the cornered Islamists, the minister said.
However, a military source, asking not to be identified, said the cadets were shot dead in Friday's raid.
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFM television that special forces had intervened at the request of Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou. France stationed special forces in northern Niger to help protect its desert uranium mines, which provide a fifth of the fuel for France's nuclear reactors.
Niger has emerged as a firm ally of France and the United States in the fight against al Qaeda-linked groups in the Sahel. It has deployed 650 troops in neighboring Mali and sought to shut its porous desert borders to Islamist groups that are thought to have shifted their bases to southern Libya.
Belmokhtar, signing his statement with his pseudonym Khalid Abu al-Abbas, said the raids were a response to Issoufou's public claims that the Islamists had been defeated in Mali.
"We will have more operations by the strength and power of Allah and not only that, but we will move the battle to inside his country if he doesn't withdraw his mercenary army," the communique, whose authenticity could not be verified, said.
SHOCKWAVE FROM MALI
Belmokhtar's brigade claimed responsibility for January's attack on the In Amenas gas plant in southeastern Algeria in which 37 foreigners were killed, saying it was retaliation for the French-led campaign in Mali.
MUJWA and al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM have pledged to strike at French interests across the region after Paris launched the ground and air campaign in January that broke their 10-month grip over Mali's vast desert north.
Recent MUJWA suicide attacks around the northern city of Gao - where the group imposed harsh sharia law during a 10-month rule - have caused relatively little damage.
Analysts said the strong impact of Thursday's attack appeared to reflect Belmokhtar's bold strategic thinking.
Belmokhtar has links with MUJWA, having spent time in GAO when it was controlled by the Islamist group last year.
"This attack is part of the shockwave from the war in Mali," said Yvan Guichaoua, an expert on Niger at University of East Anglia. "I am not surprised at all that it took place in Niger ... Militarily effective groups are fleeing Mali."
The MUJWA, which split off from AQIM in 2011, is a largely black African jihadi group with recruits from several West African countries which has claimed previous attacks outside Mali, including the kidnapping of aid workers in Algeria.
Chad's army claimed Belmokhtar was killed in northern Mali this year but Western intelligence services had played down reports of the veteran jihadist's death.
Mauritania's Alakhbar news website, which has contacts with Islamist groups, cited what it said was a spokesman for Belmokhtar's brigade saying the Niger raid was carried out by a mix of Islamist fighters from Sudan, Western Sahara and Mali.
(Additional reporting by Joe Bavier in Abidjan, Laurent Prieur in Nouakchott, Daniel Flynn in Dakar, Marinne Pennetier and Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Angus MacSwan and David Brunnstrom)
24 May 2013 Last updated at 18:12 ET
Mokhtar Belmokhtar 'masterminded' Niger suicide bombs
Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar is reported to have masterminded the two suicide bombings in Niger on Thursday.
A Signed-in-Blood Battalion spokesman told Mauritanian news agency Alakhbar that he had "supervised" the attacks, carried out with another group, Mujao.
The bombers targeted a military base in Agadez and the French-run uranium mine in Arlit, killing 21 people.
On Friday, French special forces and Nigerien troops shot dead two militants holed up inside the base at Agadez.
Niger's Defence Minister, Kardijo Mahamadou, said they had barricaded themselves inside a dormitory along with two soldiers, who were freed during the operation.
"Our military forces and French special forces assaulted [the building] and the hostages - a total of two people - were freed," he told the Associated Press. "There were two kidnappers who were hiding in the military dorm, and both were killed. The operation is now finished."
Mr Mahamadou separately told RFI radio that eight Islamist militants had been killed in the Agadez operation and two others in Arlit, adding: "All of them were wearing belts packed with explosives."
France's Defence Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, told BFM television that its troops had intervened at the request of Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou and that the situation had "stabilised".
A French defence ministry official also told AP that the two soldiers held hostage by the militants had been freed in the assault.
Earlier, local and military sources told the BBC that they had been killed.
'First response'
Thursday's bombing at the barracks in Agadez killed 19 people, including 18 soldiers. Four attackers also died while a fifth was overpowered by security forces.
The attack on the Somair mine, in the town of Arlit, killed one person and injured 14 others, its operator Areva said.
Alakhbar quoted El-Hassen Ould Khalil, a spokesman for al-Muwaqqioun bi-Dima (Signed-in-Blood Battalion), as saying: "It was Belmokhtar who himself supervised the operational plans of attacks."
The attacks "targeted elite French forces" who were providing security at the uranium mine that is majority-owned by Areva, he added.
An online statement, reportedly signed by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, read: "This is the first of our responses to the statement of the president of Niger - from his masters in Paris - that he eliminated jihad and the mujahideen militarily."
Earlier, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) also said it had carried out the two attacks. However, Mr Khalil's statement to Alakhbar said the Signed-in-Blood Battalion had jointly led the attacks with Mujao.
Mujao spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui said on Thursday that its militants had targeted "the enemies of Islam in Niger", according to the AFP news agency.
"We attacked France, and Niger because of its co-operation with France, in the war against Sharia [Islamic law]," he added, thought to be a reference to French and Nigerien involvement in driving out Mujao and two other Islamist groups from northern Mali earlier this year.
Algerian attack
In the statement threatening further attacks, Mokhtar Belmokhtar's group warned against Western intervention in the region.
"Columns of commandos and those seeking martyrdom are ready and waiting for their targets," it said.
"We will have more operations, by the strength and power of Allah, and not only that, but we will move the battle to the inside of his country if he (the president of Niger) doesn't withdraw his mercenary army," another statement to Mauritania's ANI news agency said.
On Thursday, French President Francois Hollande vowed to protect French interests and co-operate with Niger in its "fight against terrorism".
Mokhtar Belmokhtar was believed to be behind the deadly attack on an internationally run Algerian gas plant in January in which 37 hostages and 29 insurgents were killed.
He broke away from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) last year and formed a new jihadist group, known variously as the Signed-in-Blood Battalion, the Masked Men Brigade and the Khaled Abu al-Abbas Brigade.
Armed forces in Chad said he died in a raid in northern Mali on 2 March, although there was no confirmation and his death has been declared many times before.
Mujao (the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa) is a splinter group of AQIM which operates mostly in northern Mali.
It says its objective is to spread jihad to West Africa rather than confine itself to the Sahel and Maghreb regions - the main focus of AQIM.
May 24, 2013
Militant Says He Is Behind Attack in Niger
By ADAM NOSSITER
New York Times
DAKAR, Senegal — Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the mastermind of the January seizure of an Algerian gas plant that left dozens of foreign hostages dead, has claimed responsibility for another terrorist attack: the suicide bombings on Thursday in Niger that killed about 30 people, including 24 soldiers and at least six jihadists.
If true, Mr. Belmokhtar’s claim would put one of the region’s most hardened militants — whom Chad’s military said in March it had killed in battle — back at the center of the area’s fight against Islamist jihad.
Experts saw no reason to doubt Mr. Belmokhtar’s claim, despite the unconfirmed assertion by the Chadian military, which said that Mr. Belmokhtar had died during the joint campaign by Chad and France against Islamist militants in northern Mali.
Neither France nor Algeria, where Mr. Belmokhtar has been a wanted man for years for his role in the 1990s civil war there, ever confirmed Chad’s assertion. No proof was presented of his death, and a fellow militant later denied it in an Internet posting.
The latest claim by Mr. Belmokhtar — a veteran of training by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, years of terrorist acts against the Algerians and kidnappings of Westerners in the Sahara — came hours after bomb-laden vehicles ripped through a military installation and a French-owned uranium mine in Niger.
Mr. Belmokhtar, who is considered perhaps the most redoubtable of the region’s surviving militants, also played a leading role in the Islamist takeover of northern Mali last year.
The new claim was made on a number of Web sites. In one, Mr. Belmokhtar, using his nom de guerre Khalid Abu al-Abbas, signed a claim on jihadist forums that fighters from his “Those Who Sign With Blood” brigade — the same group that carried out the Algeria attack — blew up the French mine and the Niger base, according to the SITE Monitoring Service, which tracks extremists. The claim was posted by the same user who put out a video of Mr. Belmokhtar in December, the monitoring service, and it asserted that the attacks were in retaliation for supposed assertions by Niger to have defeated the jihadists.
“We warn all the countries that are intending to participate in the crusader campaign on our land, even if in the name of peacekeeping, that we will make you taste the heat of death and wounds in your homelands and among your soldiers,” the service quoted Mr. Belmokhtar as saying.
Someone who claimed to be a spokesman for Mr. Belmokhtar made a similar assertion of responsibility on a Mauritanian news site, Al Akbar, which sometimes receives communiqués from jihadists. The spokesman, Hassen Ould Khlil, told Al Akhbar that the attacks were carried out by the jihadists’ brigade “under the direct supervision of Mokhtar Belmokhtar” and “in perfect coordination” with the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a Qaeda offshoot that had earlier claimed responsibility for the attacks.
One expert on the region found the claims of responsibility credible, particularly in the aftermath of the Mali campaign, which dealt a serious blow to the militants.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he orchestrated it,” said Anouar Boukhars, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which is based in Washington. “It was only a matter of time before there was going to be retaliatory strikes,” Mr. Boukhars said.
In Thursday’s attack, suicide bombers simultaneously drove explosives-laden vehicles into a military base in the desert town of Agadez and a French uranium mine 150 miles away at Arlit. One civilian was killed in the attack on the mine. French special forces helped Niger’s military kill two surviving militants in a firefight early on Friday in Agadez, Nigerien and French officials said.
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