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French-led troops were advancing on Mali’s fabled desert city of Timbuktu on Sunday after capturing a string of other towns in their offensive against Islamist groups in the north of the country.
French air strikes destroyed the home of the leader of an Al-Qaeda-linked group in the town of Kidal overnight, after French and Malian troops seized Gao, the biggest victory so far in their 17-day operation against the militants.
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the troops were advancing on Timbuktu, a desert trading post and centre of Islamic learning for centuries, where 333 revered Muslim saints are believed to be buried.
Ayrault said the troops were currently “around Gao and (will be) soon near Timbuktu.”
African Union leaders meeting in the Ethiopian capital were discussing sending more troops to join the offensive, after the body’s outgoing chief admitted it had not done enough to help Mali.
Gao is the biggest of six towns seized by French and Malian troops since they launched their offensive on January 11 to wrest the vast desert north from the Islamists amid fears that the region could become a terror hotbed.
French-led forces on Saturday took Gao from the Al-Qaeda-linked Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the Islamist groups that have controlled northern Mali for 10 months.
A Malian security source said the home of Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) chief Iyad Ag Ghaly was destroyed in air raids on Islamist bases in Kidal, 1,500 kilometres (950 miles) north of the capital Bamako.
The Mali crisis erupted in April in the chaotic aftermath of a coup in Bamako. An alliance of Tuareg rebels seeking an independent homeland in the north joined forces with several Islamist groups, seizing Kidal first and then Gao and Timbuktu.
The Islamists quickly sidelined the Tuaregs, imposing a harsh version of Islamic law which saw offenders flogged, stoned or executed while the militants banned music and television, forced women to wear veils and destroyed ancient religious sites in the World Heritage site of Timbuktu.
France launched its military offensive after Islamists captured a central town and pushed deeper into government territory towards Bamako.
Residents fleeing Timbuktu were jubilant in the face of the French advance.
“We have the feeling that we are soon going to be liberated,” said Sidi Toure, a 67-year-old trader, speaking in the city of Mopti about 250 kilometres south of Timbuktu.
“They looted… destroyed the mausoleums of saints and amputated the hands of people they accused of stealing,” added 22-year-old student Amadou Alassane Mega.
“They beat us up when we smoked or listened to music,” he said. “They will have to pay for what they did to us. We will beat them up as well.”
— ‘We should have acted a long time ago’ —
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) chief Peter Maurer voiced concern about the situation, telling a Swiss newspaper: “Mali is one of the most profound humanitarian crises which we are dealing with today.”
The United Nations on Friday said 9,000 people had fled Mali since the launch of the French campaign, bringing the total number of refugees in the region to 150,000 while about 230,000 were internally displaced.
Belgium meanwhile said it was sending 40 troops to man helicopters involved in evacuation operations.
In Addis Ababa, outgoing African Union chairman and Benin President Thomas Boni Yayi thanked France at a summit of the 54-member organisation, as leaders discussed increasing troop numbers.
“I want to salute France,” he said, describing the AU response as slow and saying France’s action was something “we should have done a long time ago to defend a member country”.
The offensive got a fresh boost with Washington deciding to step up its role by helping refuel French warplanes, while the US and French defence ministers discussed plans for the Americans to transport troops from African nations.
West African defence chiefs also agreed Saturday to boost their troop pledges for the force to 5,700 from the previous 4,500.
Chad, which neighbours Mali but is not a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) raising the force, has promised an extra 2,000 soldiers.
So far however, only a fraction of the African troops have arrived in Bamako and French and Malian forces have done all the fighting to date.
France has deployed 2,500 troops to Mali and says 1,900 African soldiers are currently on the ground there and in Niger.
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