The Times Jerome Starkey, in Gao
The last jihadi in Gao died badly. His friends had fled, he was out of bullets, bleeding from a head wound and begging for his life when Danny Sidi Touré, a painter and decorator, stabbed him in the throat with a screwdriver.
“It was like I was blind, my heart was so full,” Mr Touré said. “He said ‘Please! For God’s sake, don’t kill me.’ But I didn’t feel anything. I stabbed him in the throat and when I pulled my hand back the handle came out in my hand but the iron was in his throat.
“Then someone hit him with a big knife and he fell down.”
The victim was a member of an al-Qaeda splinter group, Mujao, which seized control of northern Mali’s largest city last year. His fellow rebels fled Gao on 26 January amid French airstrikes. But many are still fighting in the countryside near by. (Read more...)