Senior Member of an Islamic State Affiliate is killed by Mali Forces.

According to the Mali military, a senior commander of the Islamic State group who was wanted in relation to the deaths of US forces in Niger was slain during an operation by Malian state forces.

Abu Huzeifa, also going by the alias Higgo, was a commander in the organization in the Greater Sahara known as the Islamic State. The US State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information on him.

Huzeifa is thought to have played a part in organizing an assault on American and Nigerien forces at Tongo Tongo, Niger, in 2017 that claimed the lives of four American and four Nigerien soldiersIdentification and the gathered proof affirm the death of Abu Huzeifa, known as Higgo, a renowned foreign terrorist,” the Malian army said in a statement late Monday.

Huzeifa is seen holding a machine pistol in his hand while sporting a long black beard and wearing military fatigues in a picture that was released by state television.

Since 2020, Mali has seen two coups amid a wave of political unrest that has engulfed West and Central Africa. For almost ten years, the nation has been fighting an increasingly severe insurgency spearheaded by jihadist organizations connected to the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

According to Rida Lyammouri of the Policy Center for the New South, a Morocco-based organization, “there are leaders with similar brutality ready to take control and to prove themselves,” so while the death of the commander of the Islamic State group over the weekend “could mean less violence against civilians in the region, the threat remains high.