French fighter jets pounded an Islamist rebel stronghold deep in northern Mali yesterday as Paris poured more troops into the capital Bamako, awaiting a West African force to dislodge al-Qaeda-linked insurgents from the country’s north.

The attack on Gao, the largest city in the desert region controlled by the Islamist alliance, marked a decisive intensification on the third day of French air raids, striking at the heart of the vast territory seized by rebels in April.

France is determined to end Islamist domination of north Mali, which many fear could act as a base for attacks on the West and for links with al-Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.

France’s Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French intervention on Friday had prevented the advancing rebels from seizing Bamako. He vowed that air strikes would continue.

“The President is totally determined that we must eradicate these terrorists who threaten the security of Mali, our wn country and Europe,” he told French television.

In Gao, a dusty town on the banks of the Niger river where Islamists have imposed an extreme form of sharia law, residents said French jets pounded the airport and rebel positions. A huge cloud of black smoke rose from the militants’ camp in the city’s north, and pick-up trucks ferried dead and wounded to hospital.

“The planes are so fast you can only hear their sound in the sky,” resident Soumaila Maiga said. “We are happy, even though it is frightening. Soon we will be delivered.”

Paris said four state-of-the-art Rafale jets flew from France to strike rebel ­training camps, logistics depots and ­infrastructure in Gao with the aim of weakening the rebels and preventing them from returning southward.

A spokesman for Ansar Dine, one of the main Islamist factions, said the French had also bombed targets in the towns of Lere and Douentza. Residents said rebel fighters had fled from Douentza aboard pick-up trucks.

France has deployed about 550 soldiers to Mali under “Operation Serval” – named after an African wildcat – split between Bamako and the town of Mopti, 500 kilometres north.

In Bamako, a Reuters cameraman saw more than 100 French troops disembark yesterday from a military cargo plane at the international airport.

The city itself was calm, with the sun streaking through the dust enveloping it as the seasonal Harmattan wind blew from the Sahara. Some cars drove around with French flags draped from the windows to celebrate Paris’ intervention.

More than two decades of peaceful elections had earned Mali a reputation as a bulwark of democracy, but that image unravelled in a matter of weeks after a military coup in March, which left a power vacuum for the Islamist rebellion.

French President Francois Hollande’s intervention in Mali has won plaudits from leaders in Europe, Africa and the United States but it is not without risks.

It raised the threat level for eight French hostages held by al-Qaeda allies in the Sahara and for the 30,000 French expatriates living in neighbouring Muslim states.

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