[3:41 PM, 9/16/2021] Zafar Malik: Paris – September 16 (Online): French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that French military forces had killed Islamic militant Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, the leader of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.
“It’s another major success in our fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel,” Macron said in a tweet, without disclosing the location of the operation.
Sahrawi was the historic leader of Islamic State in the Sahel region of West Africa and his group targeted U.S. soldiers in a deadly attack in 2017, Macron’s office said. In August 2020, Sahrawi personally ordered the killing of six French charity workers and their Nigerien driver, it added.
Macron said in July that France would soon begin reshaping its force in the Sahel, where it has been on the front line of the fight against Islamist militants, and would ultimately halve its military presence.
With no apparent end in sight to France’s operations and political turmoil especially in Mali, Paris had grown frustrated.
[3:42 PM, 9/16/2021] Zafar Malik: world
[3:43 PM, 9/16/2021] Zafar Malik: Sci-fi action film “Free Guy” stays atop Chinese box office chart
BEIJING, Sept. 16 (Xinhua/APP):U.S. sci-fi action film “Free Guy” continued to lead the Chinese mainland box office chart on Wednesday, figures released by the China Movie Data Information Network showed Thursday.
The movie, following a bank teller who discovers he is actually a background player in an open-world video game and decides to become the hero of his own story, raked in about 7 million yuan (around 1.09 million U.S. dollars) on its 20th day of screening.
It was followed by domestic action film “Raging Fire,” which generated 5.92 million yuan.
U.S. action film “The Tomorrow War” ranked third, with its daily box office earnings close to 3 million yuan
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