French troops advance in Mali as Islamists melt away
NIONO, Mali (Reuters) - French troops advanced cautiously toward northern Mali on Sunday amid fears of ambush by al Qaeda-linked fighters, while its fighter jets pounded the Islamists' strongholds in the desert near Timbuktu.
In the central
Malian town of Diabaly, seized by Islamist fighters on Monday, the
wreckage of the Islamists' charred pick-up trucks lay abandoned among
the mud-brick buildings, television images showed.
Residents of the
town, some 350 km (220 miles) from the capital Bamako, said Islamists
had fled into the bush after French airstrikes.
The commanders of French and Malian forces, who set up
their operations center in the nearby town of Niono, said their forces
were moving slowly toward Diabaly after reports that Islamist fighters
had abandoned their turbans and flowing robes to blend in with local
residents."There are risks of mines and booby traps in houses, that is why we have to be careful," a French commander who would be identified only as Colonel Frederic told reporters sheltering from the sun in a
grove of trees.
France has deployed 2,000 ground troops and its war planes have pounded rebel columns and bases for 10 days, turning back an Islamist advance towards the riverside capital which Paris said would have toppled Mali's government.
French now aims, with international support, to dislodge the Islamists from Mali's vast desert north, an area the size of Texas, before they use it to launch attacks on the West.
The Islamist alliance, grouping al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM and home-grown Malian militant groups Ansar Dine and MUJWA, has imposed harsh sharia law in northern Mali, including amputations and the destruction of ancient shrines sacred to moderate Sufi Muslims.
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French Rafale and Mirage planes had bombed Islamists' camps and logistics bases around the ancient caravan town of Timbuktu as well as Gao, the largest city of the north. The strikes were aimed at preventing Islamist fighters from recovering to launch a counterattack.
"The terrorists...have diversified tactics. They can leave a town at any time or mingle with the population to avoid air strikes," he said. "It's urban guerrilla warfare as well as a war so it's very complicated to manage."
In Sevare, the main military base in central Mali, a French military commander told Reuters his forces were hanging back to allow Malian troops to mop up Islamist resistance near the town of Konna. Malian troops lost several vehicles and soldiers to Islamist counterattacks, Colonel Didier Dacko said.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius
denied Mali could spiral into another Afghanistan, saying that Islamist
fighters did not have the support of the local moderate Muslim
majority.
The stakes in Mali
rose dramatically this week when Islamist gunmen cited France's
intervention as their reason for attacking a desert gas plant in
neighboring Algeria,
seizing hundreds of hostages. Algeria carried out an assault on
Saturday to end the siege and said on Sunday it expected a heavy death
toll.
Veteran jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar claimed
responsibility in the name of al Qaeda for the Algeria attack,
Mauritanian news website Sahara Media said on Sunday."We are ready to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government provided they stop their bombing of Mali's Muslims," Belmokhtar said in a video, according to Sahara Media.
SLOW AFRICAN DEPLOYMENT
The conflict in Mali and the hostage crisis in Algeria have raised concerns about the radicalization of the broader Sahel region, which is awash with weapons pillaged from the armories of toppled Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
At a meeting with ECOWAS heads of state in Ivory Coast on Saturday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius appealed for international help to fund a U.N. mandated African mission to oust the Islamists from the region.
A donors conference will be held in Ethiopia on January 29.
Military experts
say France and its African allies must deploy ground forces quickly to
capitalize on recent gains and prevent the insurgents from regrouping in
the desert.
The African
deployment is hampered by a lack of transport and supplies, however.
Nigeria, Niger and Togo have deployed a few hundred troops and a first
contingent of 50 Senegalese troops left for Bamako on Sunday.
Underscoring the
scale of the challenge, diplomats said full deployment of Senegal's full
contingent of 500 soldiers was being held up by the lack of ammunition
for their artillery.
Chad's President
Idriss Deby, visiting a battalion of 600 Chadian troops awaiting
deployment in neighboring Niger, said his government would do everything
to ensure the maximum number of African troops in Mali.
"It's not that we
have a lot of soldiers to spare but it's because we want to ensure the
maximum number of soldiers on the ground," said Deby, who has promised
to send 2,000 soldiers.
Human Rights Watch
warned on Saturday it had received reports of serious abuses, including
killings, being committed by Malian security forces against civilians in
Niono, fuelling concerns of reprisals by the army against Tuaregs and
Arabs -- ethnic groups associated with the Islamist uprising.
A rebellion by the
MNLA Tuareg separatists last year seized control of the north, which
they call Azawad, before it was hijacked by the Islamists.
A spokesman for the
MNLA said on Sunday it was were ready to join international efforts to
expel the rebels, amid fears the Malian army could exact revenge on
Tuaregs.
While some Tuaregs
support the Islamists, particularly the Ansar Dine faction founded by
former separatist leader Iyad ag Ghali, many of them do not and resent
its fundamentalist form of Islam at odds with the region's moderate Sufi
beliefs.
"The population of
Azawad, for whom we are fighting, are the first victims of this
terrorism and we are afraid they will also become victims of the
military operation, especially from the Malian army," Ibrahim Ag Mohamed
Assaleh told Reuters.
No comments