French troops killed one of the Sahel region's leading jihadists on Oct. 9, France's defense minister said on Tuesday.
Ali Maychou was the No. 2 in command of Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an umbrella group for al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in West Africa's Sahara.
Violence by Islamist terrorists has proliferated in the sparsely-populated Sahel in recent years, with links to al-Qaeda and the ISIS terrorist group using central and northern Mali as a launch pad for attacks across the largely desert region.
By Tangi Salaun and Maya Nikolaeva