Guardian

MALIAN troops were preparing  Tuesday to re-take a key regional capital occupied by Tuareg separatist rebels who have refused to allow the entry of the country’s army or government ahead of nationwide elections.

Troops have been mobilised in four “battle groups” to enter the northern city of Kidal and “close in around” the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), an armed group formed by separatists from the country’s Tuareg minority, army spokesman Souleymane Maiga told Agence France Presse (AFP).

The move came after a suicide bomber blew himself up at the house of an MNLA commander in Kidal, the scene of a number of attacks since it was occupied by Islamist militants and then the MNLA after a military coup last year.

A French-led military offensive launched in January succeeded in ending a year-long occupation of the desert north by al Qaeda-linked armed Islamist groups, ousting them from urban areas.

But Islamist attacks, usually targetting Malian soldiers and African forces deployed to the north, persist.

Seven people were killed in a suicide bombing in Kidal in February, and three soldiers from Chad died in another attack there in April.

“It was exactly 10.20 a.m. (1020 GMT) when we heard the explosion,” Moussa Ag Ibidas, a local aid worker, told Reuters.

“When we arrived, there was just human debris left. We couldn’t even identify the body. His bomb must have been poorly programmed, or he made a false move,” he said.

Witnesses said the explosion occurred near the Kidal home of an MNLA officer and not far from the former residence of Iyad Ag Ghaly, the leader of Islamist group Ansar Dine. But it was unclear what the bomber had intended to target.

“They (the Malian military) are en route to Kidal and they just arrived in Anefis in large numbers and heavily armed,” a resident of Anefis, 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Kidal, told AFP.

The army would not specify the number of soldiers sent to the region.

Kidal, 1,500 kilometres northeast of the capital Bamako, has French and Chadian troops to provide security but is being run by the MNLA.

On April 12, four Chadian soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing in a city centre market and in February, there were two suicide attacks – the first aimed at French soldiers in which the driver of an explosives-laden car died and the second killing seven MNLA members at a checkpoint.

Yesterday’s attack targeted an MNLA colonel suspected by the Malian army of being an informant for the French military, which sent troops into Mali in January to push out Islamist extremists who had seized the country’s vast desert north for 10 months.

“The suicide bomber was waiting for someone in the (MNLA) colonel’s house when he was caught by some youths and set off his bomb. He is dead and there is one person wounded,” Maiga told AFP.

Dozens of black inhabitants were expelled from Kidal over the weekend by the MNLA in an act denounced as “ethnic cleansing” by the government, which reaffirmed that the presence of troops in the city was “non-negotiable” ahead of presidential elections scheduled for July 28.

The MNLA has denied targetting black inhabitants but claims it has arrested dozens, including an army officer, in a hunt for “infiltrators” sent by the Malian authorities.