BAMAKO (AFP) An Algerian leader of Al-Qaeda who coordinated operations in northern Mali was killed in a road accident between the Malian cities of Gao and Timbuktu, Islamists controlling the zone said Monday.
“Nabil Makloufi was called to God on Saturday night. He was killed with other brothers in a car accident between Gao (in the northeast) and Timbuktu (in the northwest),” said Moussa Ould Mohamed, a member in Gao of the Islamist forces that have occupied northern Mali for more than five months.
The death of Makloufi was confirmed to AFP by a member of the Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) group in Timbuktu, who added that he was driving the vehicle himself when the accident took place.
The private news website Sahara Medias, which covers Islamist activities in northern Mali, also reported the death of the Algerian, saying that the accident took place “about 200 kilometres (125 miles) west of the town of Gao”.
Nabil Makloufi is the real name of the man more widely known as Nabil Abou Alqama, a deputy chief of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) for the Sahara zone, according to Sahara Medias.
According to several security services in the Sahel, Makloufi was aged about 40 and was a former member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which battled the Algerian regime between 1992 and 1998.
The same sources said that he was in charge of weaponry, notably explosives, in Al-Qaeda. He was also the AQIM chief in the north of Mali responsible for the release of abducted Westerners and liaising with the heads of the fighting units known as “katibas” that held European hostages.
His authority was accepted by prominent katiba chiefs like Abou Zeid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, and Makloufi had taken part directly in negotiations to fix the amount of ransoms, according to a Malian former mediator who worked on a case with him and described him as “vigorous”.
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