Al Qaeda reinforcing African-based terror cells

Aderrahmane was picked to take the place of former AQIM top commander Ameen Ould al-Hasan, who was also killed when French forces pushed the group from its strongholds in Northern Mali earlier this year. 

{mosads}Dubbed the “Emir of the south,” Abu Zaid was killed along with 43 other militants as part of the French counterterrorism offensive. 

He has been accused of kidnapping Westerners to raise money to buy arms, including four French nationals in neighboring Niger who remained in the group’s captivity at the time of the strikes.

Al-Hasan led the AQIM attack on Timbuktu and held the northern Malian city until French troops took it back in February. 

The new al Qaeda leadership installed in western Africa represents the terror network’s ongoing effort to secure a larger foothold on the continent. 

On Sunday, gunmen from al Shaabab, the Somali-based terror group with ties to AQIM, launched a bloody attack on a shopping mall in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

Kenyan forces eventually pushed out the Somali militants from the massive shopping complex after four days of intense fighting, President Uhuru Kenyatta announced Tuesday. 

The Nairobi siege ended with more than 200 casualties, including 61 civilians and six Kenyan soldiers killed, according to Kenyatta. 

Five terrorists were killed and another 11 suspects are also in government custody, he added. 

Prior to Sunday’s strike, U.S. military and intelligence officials categorized al Shaabab as a strictly local threat in Somalia, more akin to an organized criminal group rather than a transnational terrorist organization. 

However, groups like al Shaabab and the Nigerian-based Boko Haram are forging closer ties with AQIM, posing an increased risk to American and allied interests in Africa. 

Those affiliations have resulted in the al Qaeda cell evolving into one of the organization’s most dangerous factions, second only to al Qaeda’s Yemeni cell, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

However, U.S. military and intelligence officials are still having significant difficulty gaining any insight into the network of African extremist groups who are rapidly gaining ground on the continent. 

The relatively small network of intelligence assets Washington currently has in place in Africa pales in comparison to the number of similar American assets in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in the Mideast.

But the resulting blow back from the Mideast counterterror campaign has manifested itself with the rise of al Qaeda factions gaining control of wide swaths of territory in North and Western Africa.