Special Operations

In 2010, in Nijrab, northeastern Afghanistan, Navy Special Forces men on a mission stumbled upon a veritable hornet's nest.

A few months after the liberation of the Ponant hostages, a retired French couple convoying a sailboat to Europe is taken hostage by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden.

On April 6, 2011, the men of the 1st Rpima and the 4th Rhfs, supported by the pilots of the 1st Rhc, carried out an extraordinarily daring operation to free the Japanese ambassador, who was being held hostage in his residence in Cocody by militiamen in the pay of Laurent Gbagbo.

In 2000, the hunt for Momcilo Krajisnik, Radovan Karadzic's former right-hand man wanted for war crimes in Bosnia, mobilized 250 men of the Hubert commando.

On December 24, 2010, a large-scale operation was set up by the French army in cooperation with the Afghan army, with the aim of regaining control of the Alassai valley, a strategic crossing point held by the insurgents.

In 2008, a special forces detachment from the 1st RPIMA was sent to Chad. Its mission: to conduct a reconnaissance of an area near Darfur for humanitarian purposes. But the commandos were caught in a deadly ambush.

After the 9/11 attacks, elite French soldiers secretly joined the American army in its fight against the Taliban.

On November 7, 2006, in Fort-de-France, Special Forces soldiers boarded a frigate. They had to board and inspect a cargo ship filled with drugs by a Colombian cartel. After a 96-hour chase, a record seizure was made by France: 4.5 tons of pure cocaine.

Friday, January 15, 2016, Ouagadougou. The Splendid Hotel, an establishment in the center of the Burkinabe capital, frequented by Western diplomats, women and businessmen and their clients, is the scene of a violent attack, followed by a massive hostage taking. The terrorists claimed to be from AQIM (Al Qaeda au Maghreb Islamique). The authorities of Burkina Faso, wishing to prevent the situation from deteriorating further, called in the French Special Forces from the ultra-secure camp of Zagré, in the northern suburbs.