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Mali said on Monday that it had killed a high-value Islamist commander who helped lead a 2017 attack in which four American and four Nigerien soldiers were killed<\/a> alongside an interpreter.<\/p>\n The U.S. State Department had put a $5 million bounty<\/a> on the head of the commander, Abu Huzeifa \u2014 a member of an affiliate of the Islamic State \u2014 after his participation in an attack in Tongo Tongo, Niger, on American Green Berets and their Nigerien comrades.<\/p>\n At that time, the attack was the largest loss of American troops during combat in Africa since the \u201cBlack Hawk Down\u201d debacle in Somalia in 1993.<\/p>\n In a post<\/a> on social media on Monday, Mali\u2019s armed forces said that on Sunday they had \u201cneutralized a major terrorist leader of foreign nationality during a large-scale operation in Liptako\u201d \u2014 a tri-border region that contains parts of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The three countries, all led by military juntas, have teamed up to fight extremist violence under a new partnership, the Alliance of Sahel States \u2014 something critics have said is an attempt to legitimize their grip on power.<\/p>\n Officials at the U.S. State and Defense Departments said on Tuesday that they were aware of the report of Abu Huzeifa\u2019s death, but were seeking more information.<\/p>\n The U.S. declared eight men wanted for the Tongo Tongo attack. With Abu Huzeifa\u2019s death, only one \u2014 Ibrahim Ousmane, better known as Doundoun Cheffou \u2014 is thought to be still alive. In 2021, France announced that it had killed<\/a> the principal planner of the attack, the head of the Islamic State affiliate, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahraoui.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The affiliate, now called the Islamic State Sahel Province, has declared allegiance to the Islamic State. The core leadership was decimated after Al-Sahraoui was killed but they have regrouped and are \u201cin the process of establishing a pseudo-state\u201d in the border areas between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, according to ACLED<\/a>, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Broadcasting the report of Abu Huzeifa\u2019s death on Mali\u2019s state television channel, an announcer described him only as a \u201cforeigner.\u201d Analysts said his origins were in the disputed territory of Western Sahara, controlled by Morocco, or in the Algerian camps where refugees from the territory have spent the past 40 years.<\/p>\n In photographs and video broadcast by the channel, Abu Huzeifa was shown with a flowing beard and mane of hair, a slight man in fatigues and goggles, holding an ISIS flag and a gun.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Malian army succeeded where the armies said to be the most powerful in the world failed,\u201d said Abdoulaye Sacko, the announcer.<\/p>\n Mali has been in crisis since 2012, when rebels and jihadists took control of swaths of its desert north. The intervention of foreign forces \u2014 led by France, which deployed thousands of troops \u2014 failed to stop the unrest.<\/p>\n In 2020, coup plotters overthrew Mali\u2019s elected government<\/a>, using the security crisis to justify their power grab. But since then the ruling junta has pursued the same military-first strategy that the foreign forces did, and nearly four years later, analysts say the situation is worse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After a ten-year fight against the Islamists, French troops pulled out in 2022<\/a>. The junta in Mali turned instead to Russian military advisers and mercenaries<\/a> with the Wagner group, who were accused of committing atrocities<\/a> in the course of pursuing the militants.<\/p>\n Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York, said, \u201cISIS will replace him, and its affiliates will continue to expand throughout the region, at the same time the U.S. and Western presence is shrinking.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite delaying elections, Mali\u2019s junta has appeared to enjoy enduring public approval, particularly in Bamako, the Malian capital. Last November, it boosted its popularity by recapturing the northern city of Kidal, which had been in the hands of separatist rebels for a decade. When they heard that Kidal had fallen, dozens of people waved flags at Bamako\u2019s Independence Square in celebration.<\/p>\n Residents of Bamako, welcomed the news of Abu Huzeifa\u2019s death on Tuesday. But he has less name recognition than other jihadists fighting in Mali, and most citizens were too preoccupied with the difficulties of daily life to do much celebrating.<\/p>\n Debilitating electricity cuts \u2014 many areas get less than six hours of power per day \u2014 have forced many businesses to grind to a halt, with dire consequences for the economy. A severe heat wave, caused in part by climate change<\/a>, has precipitated a surge in deaths and hospital admissions in Bamako.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Bamako residents joked that the Malian junta should collect the $5 million bounty from the Americans \u2014 and use it to try to stop the outages.<\/p>\n Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n