Al-Qaeda has confirmed one of its top military commanders in North Africa died in a car accident, according to a statement posted yesterday on a website used by Islamist militants.
An Algerian security official said Nabil Sahrawi, an Algerian national and military commander of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in the Sahara desert, died in a car accident in northern Mali last week.
The group said Sahrawi, who it also identified as Nabil al-Orasi, had been jailed in Algeria and was among the first fighters to join the group in the Sahara as a young man in the 1990s.
He had served as deputy to Abdelhamid Abu Zeid, one of AQIM’s leading field commanders in the Sahara desert. – (Reuters)