Mali: French bomb Islamists, 4 wounded
2013-02-25 14:27
Bamako - French warplanes attacked an Islamist base in north
Mali at the weekend, wounding four members of the Arab Movement of the Azawad
(MAA), after the extremists clashed with Tuareg rebels, MAA and security
sources said on Monday.
"Four fighters of the MAA were wounded during bombing
by the French air force [on Sunday] against our base at Infara," 30km from
the border with Algeria, Boubacar Ould Taleb, a leader of the MAA, told AFP in
the capital Bamako by telephone.
"They were French planes [...] that bombed our base.
Five vehicles belonging to our movement were also destroyed," Ould Taleb
added, denouncing the "open support" France was giving to the Tuareg
rebel National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA).
Ould Taleb accused MNLA fighters of "looting the goods
of our relatives" and "raping our daughters and our wives."
A regional security source confirmed the attack.
"French military planes on Sunday bombed MAA positions hard up against the
Algerian border," he said.
Infara lies 30km from In-Khalil, another Malian village
where the MAA clashed on Saturday with the MNLA, a veteran separatist movement
that has aligned itself with Mali's army and the French in their bid to rid
northern Mali of armed Islamic fundamentalists. Azawad is the name Tuaregs give
to their would-be state in the north.
Mohamed Ibrahim Ag Assaleh, an MNLA official based in
Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou, on Saturday said that Tuareg forces were
attacked by "terrorists" led by Omar Ould Hamaha of the Movement for
Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao). The Mujao was one of the Islamist
movements that occupied northern Mali after a March 2012 coup in Bamako led to
military chaos.
Ag Asseleh also accused "the MAA and Ansar
Al-Sharia", a splinter "dissident group from the Mujao", of
attacking MNLA forces.
He said the MNLA had taken "nine prisoners: six who
claim to belong to the Mujao and three from Ansar Al-Charia".
The MAA, a separatist movement formed in March 2012,
confirmed that its forces launched an attack at 04:00 on Saturday in what it
said were reprisals for violence committed by Arab forces in the region.
