Head of Islamic State in Sahara 'killed' confirms France's Emmanuel Macron
French troops have neutralised the Islamic State (IS) leader Adnan Abou Walid al Sahraoui in the Sahel region, country’s President Emmanuel Macron said on 16 September. In a tweet, he confirmed that Sahraoui, who led the terror outfit in the Greater Sahara, has been killed, marking a “major success” in France’s fight against terrorism. It is imperative to note that France has repeatedly been subjected to attacks perpetrated by Islamist terrorists leading Macron to blatantly declare a war on “Radical Islam”.
The jihadist militant was involved in the massacre of six French charity workers and their Nigerian driver last year. In addition, his group has also abducted foreign citizens and conducted multiple attacks on them. According to multiple reporters, he is believed to still be holding American Jeffrey Woodke, who was abducted from his home in Niger in 2016.
Terror attacks in France
Last year in October, an armed man with a 12-inch-long knife stabbed people praying inside the Basilica of Notre-Dam in Nice at 8.29 AM (local time). The man reportedly slit the throat of a 60-year-old woman, a church worker and also left a woman severely injured. While the 60-year-old woman and the church worker reportedly died on the spot, the other 44-year-old woman managed to get out of the church. However, she later succumbed to her wounds in the nearby cafe. The gruesome attack, which is now being treated as a terror attack by prosecutors, came in the backdrop of thousands rallying across France in solidarity with the teacher Samuel Paty, a French middle-school teacher, who was killed and beheaded by an Islamist.
In November 2015, nine gunmen and suicide bombers struck within minutes of each other at the National Soccer Stadium, Bataclan concert and Paris restaurants and cafes. A total of 20 men, all linked to the Islamist State (ISIS), have been accused but six out of them would be tried in absentia. The country remains on its highest terror alert following massacres on its territory carried out by Islamist radicals from 2015 and also a series of attacks in late 2020. The attacks included the beheading of a school teacher by a teenager originating from Russia’s southern region of Chechnya and also the October 29 knife attack on a church in the southern city of Nice by a migrant from Tunisia that left three people dead.
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