WASHINGTON: One of the militants killed in a US air strike in Libya over the weekend was a high ranking Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) official, the US said on Wednesday.
The strike on Saturday, the first against Al-Qaeda militants in Libya, killed "two terrorists" as part of efforts to deny militants a safe haven in the country's vast desert.
The military had not said who the target of the strike was until now.
The US designated Abu Dawud as a terrorist two years ago.
He began engaging in terrorist activity as early as 1992. He was a senior member of the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), now known as AQIM, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, and participated in multiple terrorist attacks in that capacity, according to the US.
As a senior leader for AQIM, Dawud is responsible for multiple terrorist attacks, including the Feb. 4-5, 2013 attack on the military barracks in Khenchela, Algeria, that injured multiple soldiers and a July 2013 attack on a Tunisian military patrol in the Mount Chaambi area that killed nine soldiers.
US military says senior Al-Qaeda leader Musa Abu Dawud killed in Libya raid
US military says senior Al-Qaeda leader Musa Abu Dawud killed in Libya raid
UK interior minister insists asylum reforms ‘fair’ amid blowback
- Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders
- Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow”
LONDON: Britain’s interior minister doubled down Thursday on her tough stance on immigration despite criticism from charities and unease within the ruling Labour party that it is shedding left-wing voters.
Shabana Mahmood announced that asylum seekers who break the law or work illegally will be thrown out of government-funded accommodation and lose their support payments.
The policy forms part of a major overhaul of migration rules announced late last year and modelled on Denmark’s strict asylum system that aims to slash irregular migration to the UK.
Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders and that her overhaul of the asylum was “firm but fair,” adding she would open new and safe legal routes.
But Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow” that “risks forcing people into destitution, homelessness and exploitation while they wait for their claims to be decided.”
Mahmood’s reforms are widely seen as an attempt to stem support for the hard-right Reform UK party, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage.
It has topped opinion polls for a year, in part because of the government’s failure to stop thousands of migrants from arriving in England from northern France on small boats.
But her stance has also been credited with contributing to Labour losing support to the progressive Green party, which won a local election in a traditional Labour heartland last week.
Mahmood said there was a middle path between Farage’s “nightmare pulling up the drawbridge and shutting out the world” and Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s “fairy tale of open borders.”
Her reform that makes refugee status temporary, including for accompanied children, came into force this week.
The status will be reviewed every 30 months, with refugees forced to return to their home countries once those are deemed safe.
They will also need to wait for 20 years, instead of the current five, before they can apply for permanent residency.
She also announced earlier this week that the government would stop issuing education visas to nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan.
It said there had been a surge in asylum applications by students from those countries and almost 135,000 asylum seekers in total had entered the UK using legal routes since 2021.
