French air strikes in northern Mali have killed Islamist militant Oumar Ould Hamaha, a jihadist with a $3 million US government bounty on his head, Malian military sources said on Friday. Hamaha, known as 'Red Beard' because of his henna-dyed whiskers, became a leading figure in the Islamist coalition that seized control of northern Mali in April 2012 after drifting among armed Muslim groups in the Sahara over the last decade.
A French-led military offensive launched in January 2013 broke the grip of the al Qaeda-linked militants over northern Mali, but small pockets of Islamists have continued to operate in the vast desert region. Two Malian military sources said Hamaha - a former member of al Qaeda's north African wing (AQIM) who later became a leader of Mali's Movement for Unity and Jihad in the Islamic Maghreb (MUJWA) - had been killed by French air strikes. One of the sources said that Algerian militant Abou Walid Sahraoui, another former AQIM fighter who played a prominent role in MUJWA, had also been killed by strikes in the Tigharghar mountains in remote north-eastern Mali.
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