France conducted airstrikes against Jihadists in the Sahel region in support of Operation Barkhane. The strikes were conducted by Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Mirage 2000 combat jets.
France which has been leading the fight against the Islamic State militants in Africa’s Sahel region conducted mop-up operations during the Holy Month of Ramadhan in the region that is marred by terrorists allied to both al Qaeda and ISIS.
The French defense ministry on 26 May said that the operation neutralized a large number of Islamic State terrorists, destroyed more than forty motorcycles, a pick-up, 30 AK-47 machine guns, one RPG-7 rocket launcher, a 12.7 mm heavy machine gun.
Led by the French military, in partnership with the G5 Sahel countries, Operation Barkhane was launched on 1 August 2014 to combat terrorism and insecurity in the Sahel. It brings together some 5 100 soldiers who operate in the Sahel region across Burkina-Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad.
In the past few weeks, it is evident that a purported alliance between Al Qaeda and ISIS in the Sahel region has gone to disarray and s such resulting in a slight uptick in attacks that are viewed as territorial battles between the two groups that are ideologically very different. Intelligence had previously indicated that both terror organizations in the Sahel had an unspoken alliance that ensured that the territory was demarcated and they coexisted to fight a common enemy; that was local governments and their international allies. The broken truce can be majorly traced to the fact that JNIM- an al Qaeda affiliate was open to talks with the Malian government a move that dented the proverbial truce just as ISIS in the region fortified itself.
