French help in raid on al Qaeda in Africa

Washington Post:

Mauritanian commandos backed by the French military carried out the raid in the dead of night, guns blazing as they pounced on a small terrorist campsite in a desolate stretch of the Sahara Desert.

The troops killed six members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Osama bin Laden's loosely organized North African affiliate, but four militants escaped into the surrounding wastelands, Mauritanian Interior Minister Mohamed Ould Boilil said Friday.

Details of the attack, mounted early Thursday near the border of Mali and Mauritania, were tightly held by the governments concerned. But as reports filtered out, it seemed another inconclusive chapter in the little-noticed struggle by several North African nations to snuff out a tiny al-Qaeda-style movement hiding in the Sahara far from the headline-making events of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

The French Defense Ministry said Friday that the Mauritanian military carried out the raid "with technical and logistical support" from France, without further defining the support. In Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, Ould Boilil said the raid was designed to prevent a planned attack on a military base in Mauritania.

French officials declined to comment on reports that the commandos and the French military had engaged in a joint operation to free a French hostage, Michel Germaneau, a retired engineer who was kidnapped April 22 in neighboring Niger. The terrorist group threatened last week to execute Germaneau if several of its imprisoned members were not released by Monday.

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While it is too bad they did not find the captive, the raid did some good in destroying a part of al Qaeda's infrastructure of terror in the area. I think al Qaeda's operations in Africa are also tied to the illegal drug trade form FARC through Venezuela to West Africa. From there it is moved to Europe through the al Qaeda connection.