Islamist Fighters Repelled in Assault on Timbuktu
By SCOTT SAYARE
A small band of radical Islamist fighters battled French and Malian
soldiers for hours in a firefight in Timbuktu on Sunday after
infiltrating the Malian city overnight, Malian officials said.
By SCOTT SAYARE
Published: March 31, 2013
PARIS – A small band of radical Islamist fighters battled French and
Malian soldiers for hours in a firefight in Timbuktu on Sunday after
infiltrating the Malian city overnight, Malian officials and witnesses
said.
The fighting, which was preceded by a suicide attack at a military
checkpoint on Saturday night, was the first such violence to reach
downtown Timbuktu since January, when French forces arrived and forced
out the jihadists who had seized the city in 2012. No one claimed
responsibility for the attack.
“It started after a suicide car bombing” about 10 p.m. on Saturday,
Capt. Modibo Naman Traoré of the Malian Army told Reuters. That attack,
he said, “served to distract the military and allow a group of jihadists
to infiltrate the city by night.”
The attackers appeared to number perhaps 10 or 15, said the French
military spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard, of whom “a half-dozen” were
confirmed killed. One French soldier was wounded and evacuated by
helicopter for medical treatment, Colonel Burkhard said. A handful of
Malian soldiers were wounded, according to news media reports.
After the suicide attack, fighters arriving on foot were able to “skirt”
the checkpoint, said the mayor, Ousmane Hallé. By Sunday, the fighters
had reached the city center, Mr. Hallé said by telephone.
“They had said Timbuktu was secured,” the mayor lamented. The fighting
had ceased by about 3 p.m. on Sunday, he said, though military aircraft,
presumably French, continued to circle in the skies above Timbuktu.Two
patrols of French fighter aircraft had been sent to Timbuktu, according
to Colonel Burkhard, the military spokesman, but they did not fire any
munitions.
Since jihadist fighters were driven out of Timbuktu in January, French
and Malian forces have clashed regularly with Islamist fighters a few
hundred miles east, in and around Gao, the other major population center
of the Malian north. Timbuktu, by contrast, has largely been spared
violence.
Fighters mounted similar attack on the city 10 days ago, however, in
which several Islamist fighters and a Malian soldier were killed, Malian
and French officials said. That attack began with a suicide bombing and
reportedly involved as many as 30 Islamist fighters. It was put down by
French and Malian soldiers, supported by French combat aircraft, and
the attackers did not reach the city center.
The jihadist group that maintained control of Gao until earlier this
year, The Movement For Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, claimed
responsibility for that attack, Agence France-Presse reported. France
reinforced its military presence in Timbuktu in response to that attack.
France intervened militarily in Mali in January after Islamist fighters
began a southward offensive, prompting an urgent plea for assistance by
the interim president, Dioncounda Traoré. About 4,000 French troops are
deployed there, along with 4,800 Malian soldiers and 6,300 troops from
several other African nations. French military operations have been
concentrated mostly in the craggy desert mountains of the Adrar des
Ifoghas, in the far north, a redoubt for Al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb.
Joined by Chadian forces, the French have reportedly killed several
hundred jihadist fighters in the area, including a top Qaeda commander
known as Abu Zeid, whose death has been confirmed by French and Chadian
authorities. French officials have said that combat operations in the
Adrar des Ifoghas are largely complete.
“We have reached our objectives,” President François Hollande of France
said in a television interview last week, pledging that a withdrawal of
French troops will begin at the end of April.
French forces are to number 2,000 by July, when presidential and
legislative elections are scheduled in Mali, and about 1,000 by the end
of the year, Mr. Hollande said.
But the elections will be contingent upon the security conditions in the
country, and many analysts and diplomats are doubtful that they will be
held as scheduled.
On Saturday, Mr. Traoré announced the formation of a government
commission for “dialogue and reconciliation,” whose task is to ease
tensions between the military and the government and between the
government and the populations of the north, which have long complained
of neglect by Bamako.
It is also charged with easing tensions between the government and
ethnic Tuareg separatist fighters, who drove the Malian Army out of
northern Mali last year, before Islamist fighters overran the territory
and seized control.
Tuareg militias still operate alongside French and African forces in the
north, despite strained relations with the Malian Army and the
government in Bamako. The National Movement for the Liberation of
Azawad, or M.N.L.A.– the name used by Tuareg separatists to designate
the Malian north – has accused Malian soldiers of widespread abuse of
Tuareg civilians and in recent days dismissively called the leadership
in Bamako a “putschist government,” a reference to the military coup
that toppled the elected president last year.
The group has reportedly named its own governor for the town of Kidal,
in the far north, to the displeasure of the government.
COPY http://www.nytimes.com/
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