ISIS-GS, the African terror group that claimed responsibility for the October 4, 2017 ambush that killed four soldiers from 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), has lost one of its senior officials after the French military launched an attack on one of their camps in the West African nation of Mali.
The charred carcass of Mohamed Ag Almouner, a senior leader with the ISIS-affiliated Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISIS-GS), was found by the French military after the airstrike last Sunday.
The October 2017 Tongo Tongo ambush resulted in the deaths of two Green Berets, SSG Bryan Black and SSG Dustin Wright, and two soldiers assigned to 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), SSG Jeremiah Johnson and SGT La David Johnson. Their deaths brought public attention to the dangerous missions United States Army Special Forces soldiers conduct all around the world, with significant controversy occurring after the American military website SOFREP distributed a jihadist featuring helmet-cam footage of the soldiers’ last stands and graphic deaths.
“We declare our responsibility for the attack on the U.S. commandos last October in the Tongo Tongo region of Niger,” claimed the leader of ISIS-GS, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, on January 12, 2018 in a statement.
French Mirage 2000 fighter jets carried out the airstrike on the Malian terror camp, and a follow-on raid by French commandos discovered the body of Ag Almouner with a male companion. Ag Almouner was a senior commander and one of the top leaders in ISIS-GS; the man found dead alongside Ag Almouner was reportedly a bodyguard, according to French officials. The camp was located in the vicinity of Infourkartene, south of Ménaka region of Mali.
“On August 26, 2018, in the region of Menaka (Mali), units of the Barkhane force carried out an action against an armed terrorist group, neutralizing Mohamed Ag Almouner, one of the main officials of the State Islamic in the Greater Sahara,” a French Armed Forces statement declared.
The airstrike and raid was part of Operation Barkhane, a French counterterrorism campaign that stretches across multiple African nations such as Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. There are approximately 3,000-4,000 French troops on the ground in support of Operation Barkhane, supported by roughly twenty helicopters and a half-dozen fighter jets.
The airstrike reportedly resulted in the fatalities of a woman and a teenager, with the French promising an investigation into their deaths. According to the French military, the “proven presence of civilians near the target would have led to the cancellation of the mission.”
ISIS-GS is lead by Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, a former member of the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) terrorist organization. ISIS-GS is a fairly new terror organization, only being designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Department of State on May 16, 2018. It is primarily based in Mali and conducts operations on the Mali-Niger border, including the cowardly attack that killed four U.S. and five Nigerian soldiers in Tongo Tongo, Niger on October 4, 2017. Under the nom de guerre Tinka Ag Almouner, Mohammed Ag Almouner reportedly directly participated in the attack, with reports initially claiming that he had been killed during the ambush.
