TUNIS: Tunisian security forces have killed a top aide of Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an official source told Reuters on Saturday. Algerian Bilel Kobi was “the right arm of Abou Wadoud” and was killed in an ambush near the Algerian border when on a mission to reorganize AQIM’s Tunisian branch following strikes by Tunisian forces against it, the source told Reuters. Last year Tunisian forces killed Islamist militants including Mourad Chaieb, the Algerian leader of Okba Ibn Nafaa, a group that has fought for years with security forces in Tunisia’s mountainous interior. The country also faces a potential threat from Tunisian militants returning from abroad. More than 3,000 are thought to have left to fight for jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq, and Libya over the past years.

Source: Libya Today January 20, 2018 22:07 UTC