In the space of four days, two French soldiers engaged in Operation Barkhane were killed. After the death of Brigadier Dmytro Martynyouk, the 1st class legionnaire Kévin Clément fell under the bullets. Both were part of the foreign cavalry regiment of Carpiagne.
The French armies have been engaged for four months in a vast maneuver of attrition of terrorist groups in Mali, in accordance with what was decided at the Pau summit last December. Thus, since January, the numbers of Operation Barkhane have increased from 4,500 to 5,100, the pace of engagements has become extremely high, with a hundred jihadists neutralized each month. This explains, mechanically, the increased risk of loss for French soldiers.
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"Zonal harassment actions"
Kévin Clément was fatally injured by a bullet during a collision while his squadron was conducting a sweeping operation in an area where there were isolated terrorist elements. His legionnaire comrade Dmytro Martynyouk succumbed to his injuries after having jumped on an artisanal mine during the same type of operation, which the soldiers describe as "zonal harassment action". It is a question of flushing out the terrorists at the heart of their bastion, of destroying their camp, seizing their armament, their fuel and eliminating their leader to reduce their capacities to harm.
The region known as "the three borders"
The targeted area is no longer the northern desert of Mali, where Al-Qaeda was installed in the Islamic Maghreb, at the very beginning of the conflict. This area has been fairly well cleaned. Efforts are now focused in the so-called "three-border" region, on the border between Mali, Niger and Burkina-Faso. This is where a new group has taken root: the Islamic State for the Greater Sahara. It is a question of reducing it.