Bamako: Islamist forces on Monday seized control of a town in a fresh attack on Mali’s government-held south and vowed to strike “at the heart” of France as it waged a fourth day of airstrikes against them.
French warplanes hit Islamist positions in Douentza, 800 kilometres (500 miles) north of Bamako, residents reported, after bombing munitions and fuel stockpiles as well as bases in the key cities of Gao and Kidal over the weekend.
Mali’s Foreign Minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly said Monday that the aim of the offensive was to drive out the jihadists, and not merely halt their push southwards.
“I think in the last four days these jihadists have suffered heavy losses with more than 100 deaths,” Coulibaly told BFMTV after meeting with French counterpart Laurent Fabius.
“We cannot simply push them back, we have to chase them away,” Coulibaly said. “We simply now cannot allow a time out for these forces to reorganise.”
France launched an offensive alongside the Malian army on Friday as the insurgents threatened to advance on Bamako after months of torpor over a planned African military intervention, which experts had said could only get off the ground in September.
After clashes with Malian soldiers, the Islamist rebels on Monday seized the town of Diabaly, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of the capital Bamako, according to a local government official.
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian confirmed the Islamist victory in a town which lies on the road leading directly to the capital.
“We knew there would be a counter-offensive towards the west,” he told BFM Television. “They have taken Diabaly, which is a small town, after heavy fighting and resistance from the Malian army, which was insufficiently equipped at that exact point.”
He earlier told journalists that while the Islamists had “retreated” in the east of Mali, French forces were facing a “difficult” situation in the west where rebels are well armed.
Local residents of Douentza said one of the rebel groups, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), had had fled their positions there by the time the French struck on Monday.
“Planes repeatedly bombed the Islamists’ headquarters in Douentza. It was destroyed but the Islamists were not there,” said a resident on condition of anonymity.
The insurgents are reported to have suffered heavy losses.
Residents of Gao, one of the three main northern cities along with Timbuktu and Kidal, reported at least 60 killed on Sunday which was confirmed by a security source.
A French helicopter pilot was also killed in the first day of fighting on Friday, according to the French defence ministry.
A leader of MUJAO vowed revenge against France, which has stepped up security on home soil in fear of reprisal attacks.
“France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France,” said Abou Dardar of the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) offshoot.
Another MUJAO leader Omar Ould Hamaha, nicknamed “Redbeard”, warned on radio Europe 1 that France had “opened the doors of hell” with its intervention and faced a situation “worse than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia”.
In Bamako the French high school was closed on Monday as a “precautionary measure”, French Ambassador Christian Royer said.
MUJAO’s Dardar also referred to France’s seven hostages held in Mali. “We will make a statement on the hostages today. From today all the mujahedeen are together.”
At the request of Paris, the UN Security Council was to meet later Monday to discuss the conflict, a spokesman for France’s UN mission said.
Meanwhile a West African intervention force for Mali, authorised by the UN Security Council was taking shape.
French President Francois Hollande met with Nigerian leader Goodluck Jonathan on Monday, whose country will lead the intervention and provide around 600 men.
He will also meet with his Burkinabe counterpart Blaise Compaore whose country is providing 500 troops. Niger, Senegal and Togo have also pledged 500 troops each. Benin and Ghana have also promised to send troops.
Media reports have said France is deploying about 500 troops in Mali.
A planned 400-strong European Union military training mission is expected to be speeded up and launched by early February, but would not have a combat role, said Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
Fabius said European Union foreign ministers would meet on the crisis later in the week.
France’s intervention has been backed by the European Union, NATO and the United States, while Britain is providing logistical support in the form of transport planes and Germany is weighing the provision of logistical, medical or humanitarian aid.
The Islamists swept into northern Mali as allies of Tuareg fighters waging a rebellion for independence in which the partners seized key cities after a March military coup in Bamako.
Having appropriated the Tuareg struggle as a means to install brutal sharia law, the jihadists later ousted the desert nomads of the Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) who on Monday offered to help French troops.
“We’re ready to help, we are already involved in the fight against terrorism,” Moussa Ag Assarid, an MNLA spokesman, said by telephone from northern Mali.
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