Mali: Troops secure rebel strongpoint
2013-02-18 08:49
Bamako - French and Malian troops secured the north Mali
town of Bourem on Sunday, tightening their control over areas where Islamist
insurgents have been launching guerrilla attacks to harass the French-led
military operation.
"Bourem is a bastion of Islamists," said a
military official from an African military contingent called AFISMA.
African troops in this contingent are being deployed behind
the French forward lines in the five-week-old intervention by Paris in its
former Sahel colony.
Located by the Niger River, Bourem is about 80km north of
Gao at a crossroads between Timbuktu to the west and Kidal to the north, both
of which are now under French and Malian government control.
"All the current problems in Gao come from
Bourem," said the official, who asked not to be named. He said there had
been no real fighting to take the town.
French leaders have said they intend to start pulling out
the 4 000 French troops in Mali in March to hand over security to the Malian
army and to the UN-backed AFISMA force, which is expected to exceed 8 000
soldiers and is drawn mainly from Mali's West African neighbours.
Suicide bombers
Last week two suicide bombers struck at the same checkpoint
on the road coming into Gao from Bourem, while insurgents also launched a
surprise raid in Gao battling French and local troops.
The attacks, two weeks after Gao was liberated from al-Qaeda-allied
rebels who had held it for 11 months, surprised the French and the Malian
soldiers there and raised the prospect of a laborious counter-insurgency task
for Paris' forces.
After driving the jihadist rebels from main northern towns
such as Gao and Timbuktu, French warplanes and special forces are searching for
rebel hideouts in the remote and mountainous northeast, where Paris believes
the insurgents may be holding French hostages sized in the Sahel and Nigeria.
The United States and Europe back the French-led operation
against al-Qaeda and its allies in Mali, hoping it will ward off the threat of
jihadist attacks in Africa and elsewhere.
But while providing logistical and intelligence support in
Mali, the American and European governments have ruled out sending their own
ground troops, and analysts say the French may be left with a messy
anti-guerrilla war on their hands.
