French warplanes pounded Islamist rebel camps in the far north of Mali yesterday, military sources said, a day after French President Francois Hollande was hailed as a saviour during a visit to the West African country.
Thierry Burkhard, spokesman for the French army in Paris, said the overnight raids targeted logistics bases and training camps used by the al Qaeda-linked rebels near the town of Tessalit, close to the Algerian border.
“These were important air strikes,” Burkhard said.
Tessalit, some 200 kilometres north of the regional capital Kidal, is one of the main gateways into the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains where the rebels have sought refuge after fleeing major towns.
France says the rebels are also holding hostage in these mountains seven of its citizens, seized in recent years in the Sahara region. Malian military sources said French and Chadian troops had clashed with members of the Ansar Dine militant group in the region around Kidal on Saturday.
French attack helicopters and transport planes carrying special forces left the city of Gao to reinforce the French and Chadian contingent stationed at the airport in Kidal.
The town of Kidal itself is under the control of the pro-autonomy MNLA Tuareg rebel group, which occupied it after Ansar Dine fighters fled six days ago.
France has deployed 3,500 ground troops, fighter jets and armoured vehicles in the three-week-old Operation Serval (Wildcat) which has broken the Islamists’ 10-month grip on the towns of northern Mali, where they violently imposed sharia law.
“Never has a foreign intervention in Africa been as popular as the French one in Mali,” the president of neighbouring Niger, Mahamadou Issoufou, told Radio France International yesterday, asking France to maintain its military presence.
“The object of this war should be not just to liberate Mali but to free the whole Sahel from this menace, which threatens not just us but also Europe, France and the world.”
Cheering, grateful Malians mobbed Hollande during his one-day visit to Mali on Saturday, when he congratulated French forces and pledged that they would finish the job of restoring government control in the Sahel region state.Thousands of residents in the capital shouted “Thank you France!” as Hollande addressed the crowd. “Hollande Our Saviour” read one banner.
“There are risks of terrorism, so we have not finished our mission yet,” Hollande told a news conference at the French ambassador’s residence in Bamako.