France reinforces its ground forces with an armored column in Mali, as it secured fresh backing from the United Nations and the United States.
France reinforces its ground forces with an armored column in Mali, as it secured fresh backing from the United Nations and the United States.
The French ambassador to the United Nations has said that his country launched a military intervention in Mali because it believed that the existence of the country was “at stake.”
Gerard Araud told a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council that France was responding to calls for help from the government of the former French colony.
A meeting of the 15-nation UN Security Council on Mali expressed unanimous "understanding and support" for the military intervention, Araud told reporters late on Monday.
The United Nations also said more than 30,000 people had fled the fighting and accused the militants of stopping thousands of them from travelling south into government-held zones.
French President Francois Hollande meanwhile arrived in the United Arab Emirates early Tuesday on a long-planned trade mission, but his aides have insisted he will be kept fully informed of developments in Mali.
Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, originally scheduled to be part of the high-powered delegation, stayed in Paris.
Also on Monday, The United States said it was ready to share intelligence and provide logistical support to French forces fighting Islamist militants in Mali.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pledged assistance to the French intervention in Mali and said Al-Qaeda and its allies would be denied safe haven anywhere in the world.
"I commend France for taking the steps that it has," he told reporters aboard his plane bound for Lisbon.
"What we have promised them is that we will work with them to cooperate with them and to provide whatever assistance we can to try to help them in that effort," said Panetta, according to a Pentagon transcript.
TROOPS REINFORCEMENT
On top of the use of Rafale fighters and helicopter attacks, about 650 French troops are in Mali to halt the Islamist advance, according to the French defense ministry.
Around 30 French armored tanks and troop transport vehicles crossed from Ivory Coast into Mali on Monday, escorted by a helicopter, news agencies reported.
France has a 450-strong force based in Ivory Coast supporting a UN peacekeeping mission there.
French jets on Monday hit Docents, 800 kilometers from Bamako, which the militants have held since September. But residents said the fighters had left before the warplanes arrived.
In Timbuktu, residents have said the gunmen had fled in anticipation of an attack.
In Gao, another northern city formerly held by the militants, they were nowhere to be seen after bombing by Rafale warplanes on Sunday, residents there reported.
Having been driven from their northern strongholds Monday, the militants struck back in western Mali, where officials said on Monday that the situation there was difficult.
The militants capture the small western town of Diabaly from the country's weakened army. Diabaly lies some 400 kilometers north of Bamako.
A spokesman for the Ansar Dine group, Senda Ould Boumama, said their withdrawal was a "tactical retreat" to reduce civilian casualties, in comments published on Mauritanian news website Alakhbar.
A leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) vowed revenge. "We will strike at the heart of France," Abou Dardar of the Al-Qaeda-linked group said Monday.
