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Chadian soldiers in Mali have killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the al-Qaeda commander who masterminded a bloody hostage-taking at an Algerian gas plant in January, Chad’s military said on Saturday.
The death of one of the world’s most wanted jihadists would be a major blow to al-Qaeda in the region and to Islamist rebels already forced to flee towns they had seized in northern Mali by an offensive by French and African troops.
The Iraqi army has reportedly shelled Free Syrian Army positions inside Syria near the border with Iraq. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Iraq was helping Syrian government forces regain control of a border checkpoint seized by the insurgency.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) emir Abdelhamid Abou Zeid was killed in Mali by a French airstrike, Ennahar TV reported Thursday (February 28th).
The commander of AQIM’s Tariq Ibn Ziyad Brigade was reportedly killed along with 40 other terrorists when French warplanes bombed a convoy in the area of Tigharghar in northern Mali, not far from the Algerian border.
The military and the United Nations say that over 3,000 people have fled their homes and are camping around a UN peace force base in Kitchanga area of North Kivu Province.
Correspondents in the area said that the APCLS militia attacked the town targeting Kinyarwanda speakers who are seen as supporters of the rival M23 rebels.
Thailand’s government agreed on Thursday to start talks with a major Muslim rebel group, marking a breakthrough in efforts to end a worsening conflict in the country’s south that has claimed over 5,000 lives since 2004.
The agreement, signed in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur by senior Thai security officials and members of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) group, opens the way for the first formal peace talks with rebels seeking autonomy or even a separate state in the south.
France’s defence minister has said that French troops are involved in “very violent fighting” in the mountains of northern Mali and that it is too early to talk about a quick pullout from the West African country, despite the growing cost of the intervention.
The fighting against rebels in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains has been going on for days.
Palestinian terrorists broke a three month ceasefire on Tuesday and fired a rocket from Gaza into southern Israel. The rocket fell on a road south of Ashkelon causing some damage to a road, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades took responsibility for the attack, Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported. The terrorists fired a Grad rocket in response to the “liquidation” of the prisoner Jaradat, Ma’an reported.