Despite French strikes, rebels in Mali close in

Oumar Toure comforts his wife, French citizen Nicole Obre Toure, on Monday in Segou, central Mali, as she prepares to leave the nation where she has lived for 12 years.
Oumar Toure comforts his wife, French citizen Nicole Obre Toure, on Monday in Segou, central Mali, as she prepares to leave the nation where she has lived for 12 years.

— Despite intensive aerial bombardments by French warplanes, Islamist insurgents grabbed more territory in Mali on Monday, including a strategic military camp, taking them much closer to the capital, French and Malian military officials said.

After cutting off a key road, the al-Qaida-linked extremists overran the garrison town of Diabaly, about 100 miles north of Segou, the administrative capital of central Mali, said French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. The French Embassy in Bamako immediately ordered the evacuation of the roughly 60 French citizens in the region of Segou, said a French citizen who insisted on anonymity out of fear for her safety.

The French military, which began battling the extremists in northern Mali on Friday, expanded its aerial bombing campaign, launching airstrikes for the first time in central Mali to combat the new threat.

But the intense assault, including raids by gunship helicopters and Mirage fighter jets, failed to halt the advance of the rebels, who were only 250 miles from the capital, Bamako, in the far south.

The rebels “took Diabaly after fierce fighting and resistance from the Malian army that couldn’t hold them back,” Le Drian said.

The Malian military is in disarray and has let many towns fall with barely a shot fired since the insurgency began almost a year ago in the West African nation. The fighters control the north but had been blocked in the narrow central part of the landlocked nation.

They appear to have now made a flanking move, opening a second front in the broad southern section of the country, knifing in from the west on government forces.

Mauritania lies to the northwest of Mali and its armed forces have been put on high alert. To the south, the nation of Burkina Faso has sent military reinforcements to its border and set up roadblocks. Even Algeria, which had earlier argued against a military intervention, is now helping France by opening its air space to French Rafale jets.

Many of Mali’s neighbors, who had been pushing for a military intervention to flush out the jihadists, had argued that airstrikes by sophisticated Western aircraft would be no match for the mixture of rebel groups that occupy northern Mali. Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States, the regional body that represents the 15 nations in western Africa, stressed that the north of Mali is mostly desert, and that it would be easy to pick off the convoys of rebel vehicles from the air since there is almost no ground cover.

The U.S. is already providing intelligence-gathering assistance to the French in the assault on Islamist extremists in Mali, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said.

Speaking to reporters traveling with him to Europe, Panetta said that while al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and other affiliate groups in Mali may not pose an immediate threat to the United States, “ultimately that remains their objective.”

For that reason, he said, “we have to take steps now so that [the group] does not get that kind of traction.”

A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the intelligence support had started, but said talks are continuing to determine exactly what other aid will be provided. It was not clear how long it would be before those decisions are made. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue so requested anonymity.

State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said U.S. officials are consulting with their French counterparts on a number of requests for support.

Besides France and the U.S., 11 other nations have pledged troops or logistical support. Britain over the weekend authorized sending several C-17 transport planes to help France move more troops.

Monday’s surprise assault and the downing of a French combat helicopter by rebel fire last Friday have given many pause. Just hours before Diabaly fell, a commander at the military post in Niono, the town immediately to the south, laughed on the phone, and confidently asserted that the Islamists would never take Niono.

By afternoon, the commander, who could not be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly, sounded almost desperate. “We feel truly threatened,” he said.

He said the rebels approached Diabaly from the east, infiltrating the rice-growing region of Alatona, which until recently was the site of a large, U.S.-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation project.

French aircraft bombed a rebel convoy 25 miles from Diabaly late Sunday night, the commander said. “This morning we woke up and realized that the enemy was still there. They cut off the road to Diabaly. We are truly surprised - astonished,” he said.

It was unclear what happened to the Malian troops based at the military camp in Diabaly. The commander said he had not been able to reach any of the officers at the base since the Islamists seized the town.

French forces stationed in the neighboring nation of Ivory Coast were traveling to Mali, said a spokesman for the Licorne Force in Abidjan, the Ivorian capital. An adviser to the president of Ivory Coast, who could not be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the troops will join the 550 French forces already in Mali and will head directly to Segou, and beyond to Diabaly. “They will encircle the rebels,” he said.

However, the French citizen who was being evacuated from Segou said the e-mail she received from the French Embassy indicated that small groups of rebel fighters were already heading to Segou, a drive that normally takes two to three hours.

The Islamists in northern Mali have long said that if France attacked them, they would strike back at French interests all over Africa and beyond.

On Monday, the commander of one of the al-Qaida offshoots in northern Mali dared the French to keep attacking them.

“France has opened the gates of hell. ... It has fallen into a trap much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia,” declared Omar Ould Hamaha, a leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, one of the jihadist groups that controls the north, speaking on French radio Europe 1.

At least 30,000 people have been displaced by the fighting since the insurgents began moving south last week, said U.N. deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey.

Information for this article was contributed by Greg Keller and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 01/15/2013

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