Russia arming Mali, more attacks feared
2013-02-14 08:10
Gao - Russia revealed on Wednesday it was supplying guns to
Mali's government, as French troops defused a massive bomb in the north of the
country, the latest bid by Islamist rebels to strike back.
The head of Russia's arms export agency said it had
delivered small amounts of light weapons for the West African nation's poorly
equipped and deeply divided army.
"We are in talks about sending more, in small
quantities," said Rosoboronexport chief Anatoly Isaikin, quoted by the
Interfax news agency.
In the centre of the northern city of Gao, the scene of twin
suicide bombings and a street battle in recent days, French troops defused a
homemade bomb they said contained 600kg.
The bomb, four metal barrels filled with explosives and
connecting wires, was in the courtyard of an abandoned house and had been there
since at least Monday, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.
The United Nations said on Wednesday it was working on a
"regional strategy" for the Sahel, the semi-arid region south of the
Sahara desert. Analysts say a dangerous mix of Islamist extremism, kidnapping,
drug trafficking and organised crime are fuelling the unrest there.
Mali's army is struggling to restore security after a
French-led military intervention helped it push out Al-Qaeda-linked rebels who
had seized the country's north.
Romano Prodi, the UN's special envoy for the Sahel, and the UN
West Africa representative Said Djinnit began a three-day visit to the region
on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Mali with the presidents of its
neighbours Senegal, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Niger.
On Tuesday, the UN rights chief Navi Pillay warned that Mali
risked descending into a cycle of violence.
Precarious conditions
The problem, she said, was not just rebel groups but also
the army and black majority who have carried out reprisal attacks on
light-skinned Tuaregs and Arabs accused of supporting the insurgents.
Rights groups have accused the Malian army of killing
suspected rebel supporters and dumping their bodies in wells. Tuaregs and Arabs
have also come under attack from their black neighbours in northern towns such
as Timbuktu.
In all, the crisis has caused some 377 000 people to flee
their homes, including 150 000 who have sought refuge across Mali's borders,
according to the UN.
"The recent developments in the conflict have sown
panic among these people, who have fled for fear of being trapped between two
fires," Nawezi Karl of aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Wednesday.
Refugees, who had taken few belongings with them, were
living in precarious conditions and threatened by hunger, the agency said.
Mali imploded after a March coup by soldiers who blamed the
government for the army's humiliation at the hands of north African Tuareg
rebels, who had launched an uprising in the north two months earlier.
With the capital in disarray, al-Qaeda-linked fighters
hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and took control of the north.
France launched its intervention on January 11, after Mali's
interim government called for help fending off the Islamist insurgents as they
made incursions into government territory.
Reform committee
But after pushing the rebels from the towns under their
control, France is eager to wind down the operation in its former colony and
hand over to United Nations peacekeepers.
In Bamako on Wednesday the leader of the March coup, Captain
Amadou Sanogo, was sworn in as head of a military reform committee.
Sanogo, under pressure from the international community,
handed power to the interim government last April, but continued to exercise
influence behind the scenes.
Sanogo's new post comes with living quarters at the army
chief of staff's offices in Bamako - an arrangement political and military
insiders say is a bid to lure him away from his loyalists in the garrison town
of Kati.
- SAPA
