Armed Forces Launch Comprehensive Combing Operations in Algeria Desert

National People’s Army forces launched comprehensive combing operations in Algeria’s southern desert, from Ouargla and Ghardaia, right down to the border with Mali, Niger and Mauritania, and from Oued Souf up to the Tunisian and Libyan border.

Armed forces use new precautionary measures that include military helicopters and special intervention teams, and are helped by a number of experts in the southern desert, after they received information about the smuggling of weapons within the coordination between the smuggling cell and terrorist groups that are operating in northern Mali and the Libyan territory.

Combing operations, which began immediately after the failed terrorist attempt against a gas facility in the area of Kheribcha, reached the interval between Ain Amguel and Tamanrasset, after finding trace of terrorists in the region, as the armed forces launched a comprehensive inspection operation in the neighbourhoods of Tamanrasset city, and arrested the back up cells that includ three elements from Oued Souf and arrested smugglers in Ghardaia.

Echorouk sources said armed forces are granted  larger powers after it was stripped of its powers during the previous years, during the the reforms that were made by the President of the Republic in the pyramid of system and the reforms that included the security services.

Powers were granted to commanders of the operational sectors in the provinces, in this difficult phase, due to the growing threats which have become dangerous, after the incident of Ain Salah and the seizure of  “Stinger” in Oued Souf, where other quantities of arms, that are likely to have been stored in desert sites by smugglers, are subject to large search operations as well, through the use of men of the desert, who know the routes and ports in the arid desert in the far south.

Investigations have shown that the Stinger missiles, which were seized in El Oued, were smuggled from the Libyan territory, as a former colonel in the Libyan armed forces said the army in Libya stored quantities of Stinger missiles, in Tripoli stores, and those rockets were seized from the battles of the Libyan armed forces, against the Chad troops in previous years, and after the fall of Tripoli the militias seized weapons’ stores, and the arms trade spread, which facilitated their arrival to the terrorist organization “Al Qaeda”, including other dangerous weapons.