WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Treasury Department said on Thursday it was freezing any assets the new leader of al Qaeda's branch in Mali may have in the United States and prohibited Americans from doing business with him, taking steps aimed at starving the finances of his militant group.
The sanctions targeted Yahya Abu Al-Hamman, leader in the Sahel of al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM, or al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
"We have witnessed the suffering that AQIM has inflicted on the innocent populations and hostages under its control and remain determined to cut off the funding it needs to recruit new members and carry out future terrorist attacks," Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen said in a statement.
The Treasury Department said that kidnapping foreigners and holding them for ransom has netted the group millions of dollars. Currently, it is believed to be holding at least seven French hostages.
Around 4,000 French troops, backed by the Malian army and several thousand troops from other African states, have driven the al Qaeda-linked Islamist alliance from Mali's main northern towns into the remote northeast mountains.
But Islamist insurgent suicide bombings and a rebel raid last Sunday in the Saharan town of Gao have raised fears of the French becoming bogged down in an arduous counter-insurgency war in Mali.
(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Will Dunham)
Blog List
-
Kaley Cuoco Shows Off Fit Physique In Skin-Revealing Yoga Outfit - By Suzy Byrne Kaley Cuoco leaving yoga class in L.A. on Monday. (X17online.com)Kaley Cuoco gave new meaning to hot yoga on Monday when she emerged from cla...10 years ago
Pageviews
34,225
Popular Posts
-
For iPhone users, Google Maps is back. The revamped app, launched last week , is being downloaded in the tens of millions . As a resu...
-
Tonight Doctor Who fans get to gorge on their annual Christmas fix -- a full-length special episode the series has produced every year for ...
-
Nintendo Wii U I remember it still people flipped out about the Nintendo ( NTDOY ) Wii . Yes, its name was mocked for a while, but there wa...
-
In a news conference today (Dec. 21), National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer Wayne LaPierre blamed ...
-
Mashable's Anita Li contributed to this report from Toronto. Research in Motion , maker of the once-treasured but now beleaguered BlackB...
-
Yahoo! editors have selected this video as a favorite of 2012. It first ran in Yahoo! Screen in June and eventually received more than 1 mi...
-
Apple ( AAPL ) is no stranger to ditching technologies when it deems them to no longer be useful. The company dropped the floppy disk for a...
-
Apple ( AAPL ) has just released iOS 6.0.2 to fix a number of bugs on the operating system including one bug that reportedly affe...
-
PORTERVILLE, Calif. (AP) The church bell that rings out to announce the deaths of tribal members on the Tule River Indian Reservatio...
-
SINGAPORE (AP) A young Indian woman who was gang-raped and severely beaten on a bus died Saturday at a Singapore hospital, after her horri...