JOIN USFrance’s top military officer said on Monday it was “probable” that Abou Zeid, an al-Qaeda leader in North Africa, was killed in military operations by French and Chadian forces in northern Mali.
In recent days, Chadian officials, including President Idriss Deby, have said that military forces have killed at least two senior militant leaders that led al-Qaeda-linked groups that controlled northern Mali for ten months until French forces in January launched a military operation in support of Malian government.
In a French radio interview Monday, Admiral Edouard Guillaud, the head of France’s joint chiefs of staff, said that French forces can’t immediately inspect the damage from every laser-guided bomb that they fire on militants’ positions and could not confirm whether Abou Zeid, an Algerian-born warlord and feared radical leader of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb behind the kidnapping of several Westerners, had been killed.
“It’s probable, but it’s only probable,” Guillaud told Europe-1. “We cannot be certain for the moment — it would be good news — because we haven't recovered the body.” Chad's Deby announced on Friday that Chadian troops had killed Abou Zeid in recent days.
The rare public comments from Guillaud came as British Foreign Foreign Secretary William Hague was arriving in Mali for talks with members of its long-embattled government to discuss the political process in the West African nation.