France has engaged airstrikes in Mali to clear the way for an intervention force concentrating on the capital. Despite promises that military campaign in Mali will be a short one, there are fears that Paris has got into a lengthy conflict.
On the fourth day of the French military incursion the armed forces widened their bombing campaign to encompass central Mali, to target new threats. French Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian said that Islamist rebels had seized the town of Diabaly in central Mali on Monday, overcoming the Malian government forces stationed there.
France’s Rafale fighters bombed out Islamists’ strongholds in the north near the region’s main city of Gao on Sunday, causing the militants to flee, reports AFP. The French Air Force also eliminated arms stockpiles and fuel reserves belonging to Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), MUJWA and AQIM militant groups and attacked extremists’ bases on the border with Mauritania using 250kg bombs.
Locals welcomed the actions of French Air Force which stopped the nine-month rule of the Islamists and now expect the Malian army’s return into the region to prevent militants from coming back. Reportedly, the Malian army has already made significant gains, recapturing the towns of Douentza and Konna.
The French offensive will get support from some of the former Islamists’ allies, with Mali’s separatist Tuareg rebel movement, the MNLA “ready to help” the French ground troops.
“We can do the job on the ground. We’ve got men, arms and, above all, the desire to rid Azawad of terrorism,” Moussa Ag Assarid of the MNLA told AFP.
However, the Tuaregs do not want to see the Malian army in the north of the country before an “accord between the two parties” is reached, he added.
The MNLA rebels, who’ve claimed northern Mali as their “homeland,” had initially joined the Islamist groups, but later turned to Malian authorities after an extreme form of Islamic law was imposed on them. The Tuaregs, who helped instigate the rebellion in January 2012, allowing Islamists to come to power in the country’s north, have now turned away from the same militants, instead asking the Malian government for self-rule.
The office of French President Francois Hollande announced that cabinet is holding a meeting on Monday morning on the Mali crisis. The French mission in the UN has informed that the UN Security Council will also discuss the situation in Mali later on Monday.
Separately, the EU stated that it intends to accelerate preparations to send in military trainers to strengthen the Malian army. At the same time, spokesperson Michael Mann told press that the EU had no intention of assigning the military trainers a combat role when they arrive in Mali towards the end of February.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has assured that Islamists in Mali have already been “stopped” and “taking care” of terrorist groups in the country is “a question of weeks.” He also informed that the assault on Islamist compounds on Sunday has become possible as Algeria finally opened its aerospace to French Air Force operations despite previously opposing French interference into Mali’s affairs.
Still, the French authorities have acknowledged that encountered Islamist extremists in Mali are well-trained and armed with advanced weapons, something that has not been expected. On Saturday the militants wounded a helicopter pilot who later died in hospital, becoming France’s only confirmed combat fatality to the moment.

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