Al-Qaeda has dug a deeper foothold in North Africa than ever before with the merger in recent months of a number of terrorist cells there, the United States Defence Secretary said on Friday.
Robert Gates told reporters that the terrorist groups in the Maghreb are closely affiliated to al-Qaeda and have ”emerged as a reasonably coherent organisation”.
The move has happened in ”just recent months, in the last little while”, Gates said.
The US military is working to open its first command focused on Africa — called Africom — by the end of 2008.
But a top official, Ryan Henry, an under-secretary of defence, recently denied that Africom is intended to serve as a counterterrorism command on the African continent. He also mentioned the growth of terrorism in the north of the continent.
Henry said that Africom would not have any new bases on the continent.
The US, however, has opened a base in the Horn of Africa to fight al-Qaeda, and recently used a Kenyan coastal base to help counter the onslaught of radical Islamists in Somalia, according to media reports.
Since 2004, the US military has been sending special-operations forces to train troops in Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger. — Sapa-dpa