French control two Malian towns
Soldiers patrol streets after Islamist rebels flee
DIABALY, MALI — French troops in armoured personnel carriers rolled through the streets of Diabaly on Monday, winning praise from residents of this besieged town after Malian forces retook control of it with French help a week after Islamists invaded.
The rebels also have deserted the town of Douentza, which they had held since September, according to a local official who said French and Malian forces arrived there on Monday as well.
The militants’ occupation of Diabaly marked their deepest encroachment into government-held territory, and Monday’s retaking of the town is a significant victory for the French-led intervention.
Diabaly, located about 460 kilometres north of Bamako, the capital, fell into rebel hands on Jan. 14. Residents said those who fled in the aftermath were forced to escape on foot through rice fields.
“We are truly really grateful to the French who came in the nick of time,” said Gaoussou Koné, 34, head of a local youth association. “Without the French, not only would there no longer be a Diabaly, there would soon no longer be a Mali. These people wanted to go all the way to Bamako.”
On Monday, all that remained of the Islamists were the charred shells of their vehicles destroyed by the French airstrikes. Three of them were clustered in one location, the machine-gun cannon of one still pointing skyward.
The cluster of rebel vehicles was directly in front of the home of an elderly man, Adama Nantoumé, who said the French bombs started falling about 11 p.m. the same day the militants occupied Diabaly.
“I was at home, sitting like this against the wall,” he said, showing how he had hugged his knees to his chest in a fetal position. “The plane came and the bombs started to fall. After that, I saw that the cars had caught on fire. And the explosions were so loud that for a while I thought I had gone deaf. I was suffocated by the smoke and the light burned my eyes. The gas made me cry.”
Islamists had seized Diabaly just days after the French began their military operation on Jan. 11. The offensive is aimed at stopping the radical Islamists from encroaching toward the capital in Mali’s south from their strongholds in the vast, desert north where they have been amputating the hands of thieves and forcing women to wear veils for the last nine months.
Meanwhile, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi — who hails from his coun- try’s oldest Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood — opposed France’s military intervention in Mali. Speaking at the opening of an Arab economic summit in Saudi Arabia, he said France’s actions would create a “new conflict hot spot” separating the Arab north of Mali from its African neighbours to the south. He said he would have preferred to see a “peaceful and developmental” intervention.
On Monday, about 200 French infantrymen supported by six combat helicopters and reconnaissance planes made their way to Diabaly.
French troops in camouflage uniforms took up positions in front of a Malian military camp in the town.