September 24, 2024 2:06 PM

West Africa becomes global terrorism hotspot as Western forces leave

Having slipped undetected into Mali's capital weeks ago, the jihadis struck just before dawn prayers. They killed dozens of students at an elite police training academy, stormed Bamako's airport and set the presidential jet on fire. The Sept. 17 attack was the most brazen since 2016 in a capital city in the Sahel, a vast arid region stretching across sub-Saharan Africa south of the Sahara Desert. It showed that jihadist groups with links to al Qaeda or Islamic State, whose largely rural insurg...