Mali troops to reclaim Tuareg base

Paris/ Bamako, May 19: Mali sent troops on Monday to retake the rebel stronghold of Kidal after Tuareg separatists seized local government offices, taking hostages and engaging the Army in a firefight in which dozens were killed.

Eight soldiers and 28 insurgents died in fighting Saturday outside the regional governor’s offices while around 30 civil servants were being held hostage by the militants, the government said.

“We have taken every measure necessary to reinforce our presence in the north,” a Malian Army source told AFP, declining to go into detail on the size of the deployment.

He said soldiers had been arriving since Saturday, while more were “on their way” from the city of Gao, a seven mile drive to the south- west, Anefis, a town between Gao and Kidal, and other locations.

Prime Minister Moussa Mara, who was in Kidal over the weekend as part of a first visit to the restive north since his appointment, said on Sunday that terrorists had “declared war on Mali”.

“We will mobilise the resources to fight this war,” Mr Mara told AFP by telephone.

Meanwhile, French President Francois Hollande on Monday demanded the release of top civil servants and others taken hostage in Mali's north after deadly clashes between separatists and the Army.

Mr Hollande called for the “immediate and unconditional release of Kidal's administrator and the hostages,” during telephone talks with his Malian counterpart Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a statement said, referring to the northern town where Saturday's clashes took place.

Mr Albert Koenders, the head of the United Nations’ MINUSMA peacekeeping force in Mali, condemned the vio- lence. “We are staying in our home to be on the safe side. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we are frightened,” a resident of Kidal told AFP.

The Malian government has blamed the clashes on Tuareg separatists but Mr Mara said Islamist militants had taken advantage of the crisis “to participate in the chaos alongside other terrorist groups”. He said the government was working to get the hostages released but added that some had been “killed in cold blood” while others were freed as they had been wounded.

— AFP