French military: Senior member of al-Qaida's North Africa branch killed in Mali

KIDAL, Mali, July 7 (UPI) -- The French military on Tuesday said it killed a senior member of al-Qaida's North Africa branch during an operation in Mali.

Ali Ag Wadossene was a commander in al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. French special forces troops killed him and captured two other militants in the northern city of Kidal, the BBC reports.

Last December the French government traded Wadossene and three other militants for French citizen Serge Lazarevic, who had been abducted in Mali while on a business trip in 2011.

French troops have been present in Mali since January 2013, when al-Qaida-linked militants took over large swaths of the country. French forces at the time pushed the militants from urban areas and scattered them across Mali's rural northeast.

There are about 1,200 French troops currently deployed in Mali, a former French agriculture and mining colony.

Several attacks have been reported against international groups in the country, including in Kidal last March when a rocket attack killed a U.N. peacekeeper and two civilians.

In May French special forces reportedly killed four al-Qaida operatives in Mali, including senior commander Amada Ag Hama, also known as "Abdelkrim the Tuareg," who was suspected of killing several French citizens.

In December the French military said it killed Ahmed el Tilemsi, a former AQIM member and co-founder of the breakaway Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa. The raid was part of Operation Barkhane, a French-led effort to counter extremism in the region.

"Operation Barkhane is an operation that never stops," Col. Gilles Jaron, a spokesman for the French Army's chief of staff, said at the time.