France’s crack troops and intelligence commandos are waging covert operations against Islamic State’s fighters in Libya jointly with counterparts from the United States and Britain, the French daily Le Monde reported on Wednesday.
It said President Francois Hollande had ordered « unofficial military action » by both an elite unit from the military and the clandestine action branch from the DGSE external intelligence body in the chaos-plagued North African country, which has two rival governments backed by a cluster of militias and immense ungoverned desert expanses.
Under a headline, the influential Le Monde newspaper described as « France’s secret war in Libya » included opportunistic targeted raids against leaders of Daesh, pinpointed by discreet action on the ground in the ai motf styming the terrorist group expansion in Libya.
France fears any Daesh’s spillover into its Subsaharan neihgbours like Niger would threaten its key economic interests including crucial uranium mining which provides raw material for its nuclear plants.
According to The weekly Le Point, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has okayed the deployment of an elite small froce from France’s armed forces to bolster local security at the nuclear firm Areva’s two sites in Niger, an ex-French colony.
The move comes amid a heightened security threat following a French-led offensive to drive Islamist separatists out of northern Mali, and the deadly hostage crisis at the In Amenas gas facility in Algeria, which militants said was in revenge for the French military intervention.
It is rare for French government troops to be moved abroad to protect an affiliate of private French company.
Areva operates Imouraren and Arlit uranium mining sites in Niger whre seven company workers, including five French nationals, were kidnapped by al Qadea’s Maghreb affiliate in 2010 .
Areva relies on mines in Niger to supply France’s nuclear power stations with uranium . According to a report by a French parliamentary committee, about 18 per cent of the raw material used to power France’s 58 nuclear reactors came from Niger .
Hollande said that France was at war with Islamic State after it claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national soccer stadium in Paris on Nov. 13 last year, killing 130 people.
The French Defense ministry has previously confirmed that French aircraft recently conducted reconnaissance flights over Libya, where France took a leading role in a 2011 NATO air campaign that helped rebels overthrow Muammar Gaddafi’s autocratic rule.
It has also confirmed that France has set up an advance military base in northern Niger on the border with Libya. U.S. warplanes raided an Islamic State training camp in Libya last Friday in attacks that killed nearly 50 people including two Serbian embassy employees abducted last November, according to Serbia’s prime minister.
U.S. officials said the site in the coastal Sabratha, in western Libya, was used by up to 60 militants, including Tunisian Noureddine Chouchane, blamed for two attacks on tourists in Tunisia last year in which dozens were killed.
Le Monde said French intelligence had initiated a previous strike last November that killed an Iraqi known by the nom de guerre Abu Nabil who was the senior Islamic State leader in Libya at the time.
Le Monde said specialist bloggers had reported sightings of French special forces in eastern Libya since mid-February.
The evening newspaper quoted a French defence official as saying: « The last thing to do would be to intervene in Libya. We must avoid any overt military engagement, but act discreetly. »