ALGIERS, 21 June 2004 — The leader of Algeria’s largest rebel group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, Nabil Sahrawi, has been killed by the armed forces, state television announced yesterday.
Sahrawi, also known as Abu Ibrahim Mustapha, who had led the armed group since mid-2003, was reportedly shot dead along with four other militants including one of his deputies, Abi Abdelaziz, alias Okacha El-Para, in the Bejaia area, east of the capital Algiers on Friday.
The shooting took place near the mountain village of El Kseur, where the army has been carrying out raids for more than two weeks after 12 troops died in an ambush there early this month, television quoted an armed forces statement as saying.
The GSPC leadership has been “completely neutralized” in a “vast anti-terror operation”, the armed forces were quoted as saying by the official news agency APS.
Weapons, ammunition and documents were recovered during the operation in the region of eastern Kabylie, where GSPC units had long been known to operate, the report said.
