The Mauritanian government announced in a statement the killing of three out of four jihadists who escaped from prison on March 5 and the arrest of the fourth during an operation in the north of the country, where one gendarmerie member was also killed. An unnamed security official indicated that "the operation took place late Friday into Saturday in the Adrar desert area."
Authorities launched a search operation for the escaped individuals, and the ministries of defense and interior disclosed in a joint statement that, based on intelligence information, their location was identified in a rugged mountainous area in Adrar. The statement added that "during the searching and combing operations carried out by ground units and gendarmerie units specialized in counter-terrorism, the latter came under heavy gunfire, leading to a confrontation with the terrorist elements that resulted in the killing of three of them and the arrest of the fourth, as well as the death of a gendarmerie member."
The security official clarified that "two of the jihadists were sentenced to death while the other two were awaiting trial for belonging to a terrorist organization," revealing that "one of the deceased is Salek Ould Cheikh, who has been on death row since 2011 for his role in a plot to assassinate former Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz." Ould Cheikh had previously escaped from prison in December 2015 before being arrested in Guinea-Bissau and returned to Mauritania three weeks later.
