A terror group active in West Africa has threatened to target the interests of "France and her allies" in retaliation for France's military intervention in Mali last year, according to a Mauritanian website frequently used by local jihadists to communicate with the outside world, reports ABC News.
The statement from the Mourabitounes group, sent Saturday to the Nouakchott Information Agency, also detailed terrorist operations carried out by the group's members last year, including attacks in Niger and Mali, and the killing of foreign hostages at a natural gas plant in southeastern Algeria.
Mourabitounes was formed in August, when the one-eyed terror leader Moktar Belmoktar officially joined forces with the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a radical al-Qaida-linked jihadist group that once controlled part of northern Mali and has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in the Gao region since France intervened.
In a statement last month designating the Marabitounes group as a foreign terrorist organization, the U.S. State Department said it "constitutes the greatest near-term threat to U.S. and Western interests" in Africa's Sahel region.
Read more of this Associated Press report publiushed by ABC News.