The Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) have confirmed the killing of a senior Islamic State figure during a military operation in the volatile Ménaka region, northeast Mali, intensifying efforts to root out jihadist threats in the Sahel.
The operation took place in Chimam, approximately 40 kilometres north of Ménaka. According to the army, the strike was based on reliable intelligence and led to the seizure of weapons and the neutralization of several other combatants affiliated with the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), also known as EIGS.
Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, secretary-general of the Movement for the Salvation of Azawad (MSA) and a current member of Mali’s National Transitional Council (NTC), revealed further information on social media.
Posting on the X platform (formerly Twitter), he identified the killed individual as a foreign jihadist operating under the alias “Abou Dahdah.”
He described him as the ideological backbone of the group and a specialist in improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
“He was involved in several deadly attacks, including the one in Banibangou, Niger, and massacres of civilians in Gao and Ménaka in 2022,” Ag Acharatoumane stated, alongside a purported image of the militant’s body.
The Ménaka region has long been a strategic stronghold for the Islamic State in the Sahel, emerging from the remnants of the MUJAO (Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa), which later merged with Al Mourabitoune, a group once led by Adnan Abou Walid Al Sahraoui.
Al Sahraoui pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015, a move officially acknowledged a year later.
Following Al Sahraoui’s death in a French airstrike in August 2021, leadership passed to Abu al-Bara al-Sahraoui, under whom the group expanded its footprint, particularly around Ménaka, with a spate of violent campaigns.
Since March 2022, ISGS has been formally designated the Islamic State’s “Sahel Province,” a title that followed a series of brutal civilian massacres between Gao and Ménaka—events that marked a strategic shift in the group’s territorial ambitions.
Security forces in Mali, alongside allied armed groups, continue to carry out regular operations in the region, which remains a hotspot for insurgent activity from both the Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-linked JNIM (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims).
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