Mali forces kill senior figure in Islamic State affiliate
Malian forces killed Abu Huzeifa, a leader of Islamic State in West Africa, during a big operation in the north of Menaka. The authorities announced this on state TV on Monday.
They confirmed Huzeifa’s death on Sunday after the operation in the Indelimane area but didn’t give more details.
The US State Department’s Rewards for Justice program offers up to $5 million for information on Huzeifa. He’s accused of being involved in an attack in Niger in 2017 that killed four US and four Nigerien soldiers.
Groups connected to al Qaeda and Islamic State have carried out many attacks in Mali, Niger, and nearby Burkina Faso over the last ten years. This has made the central Sahel region of West Africa unstable.
According to the International Organization for Migration, over 3 million people in the region have been displaced by the ongoing security and humanitarian crisis as of March.
