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French Report Some Progress in Mali French Troops Report Some Progress in Northern Mali
(about 1 hour later)
KONNA, Mali — French and Malian troops have taken control of the airport and the bridge over the Niger River in the eastern city of Gao, the stronghold of one of the several Islamist groups that have captured northern Mali, the French Defense Ministry said on Saturday in a statement. KONNA, Mali — French forces took control of the airport in the Islamic rebel stronghold of Gao, the French government said Saturday, winning the biggest prize yet in the battle to retake the northern half of Mali.
In an indication that French forces are making some progress in their battle against Islamist rebels, Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s defense minister, said in the statement that many of the vehicles used by the rebels as well as their logistics bases had been destroyed in the fighting. The statement provided no other information, and there was no immediate word on casualties. Gao, which lies 600 miles northeast of the capital, Bamako, has for months been under the control of one of several Islamic militant groups seeking to overrun Mali. French airstrikes have been pounding the city since French troops joined the fight at Mali’s request on Jan. 11. In addition to the airport, troops also took control of a major bridge over the Niger River in Gao, according to the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian.
French officials have been wary of disclosing the precise movements of their 2,500 troops on the ground in Mali, and on Friday a French military spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard, declined to confirm or deny that Malian or French forces had taken Hombori, where two Frenchmen were kidnapped in 2011. But he said that French aerial strikes were continuing against militants farther north. Gao, one of three major cities in northern Mali, had been under the control of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a splinter group of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Residents of Hombori, however, told news agencies that they had seen French and Malian soldiers in the town, which is 155 miles southwest of Gao, one of the three large cities in northern Mali that had been under militant control. Al Jazeera broadcast a statement from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in which the group said it had withdrawn temporarily from some cities it held, but would return with greater force.
The military maneuvers came as human rights investigators continued to uncover evidence of executions by the Malian Army, whose record of abandoning the field of battle and committing atrocities has raised serious questions about its fitness to fight alongside French and other international troops headed here to fight the rebels in the North. Timbuktu, the fabled desert oasis, and Kidal, which is northeast of Gao, have been under rebel control, but little information has come from either place for the past 10 days because mobile phone networks have been down.
Gaëtan Mootoo, an investigator with Amnesty International, said witnesses had given him credible testimony that the army had killed two men near the city of Niono on Jan. 18, well after the French intervention had begun. Here in Konna — which was overrun by Islamic fighters on Jan. 10, prompting France to intervene — residents and officials spoke Saturday of the recent turmoil.
According to Mr. Mootoo, the soldiers asked one of the men, Aboubakrim Ag Mohamed, if they could search his house. When he complied and they found nothing suspicious, they asked him to step outside. A few blocks from his house, he was shot and killed, the witness said. They said that at least 11 civilians had been killed in the French airstrikes. Charred husks of pickup trucks lined the road into the town, and broken tanks and guns littered the fish market, where the rebels appeared to have set up a temporary base.
Mr. Mohamed’s cousin, Samba Ag Ibrahim, was executed nearby, Mr. Mootoo said, when he encountered the same soldiers. The two bodies were abandoned, and villagers buried them the next day, he said. France’s sudden entry into the fray has left the United Nations and Ecowas, the regional trade bloc, scrambling to put together an African-led intervention force to help retake the northern half of the country. Mali’s army, which has struggled to fight the Islamist groups, has been accused of serious human rights violations.
More people have been killed in Sévaré, said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch. At least 11 bodies were tossed into a well in a suburb. The city is a garrison town, home to a huge contingent of Malian soldiers, raising the question of how so many could have been killed under their noses. From Konna, it is easy to see why the Malian government pleaded for French help after the Islamist fighters took control of the town. Just 35 miles of smooth asphalt separate Konna from the garrison town of Sévaré, home to the second-biggest airfield in Mali and a vital strategic point for any foreign intervention force.
“Sévaré is a heavily militarized place,” Ms. Dufka said. “It is highly likely the security forces were involved.” Residents said their town fell to the rebels when 300 pickup trucks of fighters, bristling with machine guns, rolled in and pushed back the Malian Army troops who had been guarding the town after a fierce battle.
The problem of reprisals of perceived supporters of the rebel groups is only likely to get worse as the military offensive moves northward, where Islamist groups have spent months occupying towns. Such reprisals could have an ethnic dimension, focusing on Tuaregs, Arabs and other groups seen as sympathetic to the Islamic rebels. Amadou Traore, a 29-year-old tire repairman, said residents had heard that the Islamist rebels had surrounded the town before the attack, but he had been confident that the army would keep them at bay.
“There is a rule-of-law vacuum, which was created by the departure from northern Mali by the institutions mandated to protect the civilian population,” Ms. Dufka said. “Given the high level of ethnic tension, the risk for reprisals is extremely high, which is why nipping this in the bud is paramount.” “We thought there was no way for them to enter into the town,” he said. “But they came in the night. They told us, ‘Tomorrow we will go to Sévaré.’ ”
A woman who lives in his compound was hit by a bullet, he said, and badly injured. They tried to take her to the town clinic, but the doctor there had fled.
“There was no doctor, no nurses,” he said. “After two days she died.”
Baro Coulibaly fled her house along the main road into town, moving with her husband and six children to the relative safety of the town center, where they stayed with her in-laws. They hunkered down for days, hearing the sound of French bombs and rebel bullets ricocheting around the mud-walled dwellings.
“Nobody could get in or out,” Ms. Coulibaly said. “We were so afraid we barely ate or slept.”
Residents said they heard that the fearsome Tuareg leader of the Islamist group Ansar Dine, Iyad ag Ghali, had led the attack on their town, but no one saw him in person. The rebels spoke many languages, according to the residents. Some were light skinned Arabs and Tuaregs, a nomadic people, while others were dark skinned people who spoke the local languages of Niger, Nigeria and Mali.
“Among them they were speaking many languages,” said Boubacar Diallo, a local political leader. “Even some youths from this town joined them.”
Mr. Diallo said that at first only a few rebel fighters came. Later, hundreds more joined them, overwhelming the Malian soldiers based here.
He said he never saw them pray and scoffed at their assertion that they would teach a purer form of Islam to the Muslim population of the town.
“They say they are Muslims, but I don’t know any Muslim who does not pray,” Mr. Diallo said.
The fighters took down the Malian flag and raised a banner of their own, a white piece of paper printed with words in Arabic and adorned with pictures of machine guns.
“Assembly for the Spiritual Ideology to Purify the African World,” the paper banner read.
After the Islamist fighters fled, Mr. Diallo took it down and replaced it with the Malian flag.

Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.