MALIAN soldiers have reportedly launched an assault on armed Tuareg separatists accused of ethnic cleansing, in a bid to dislodge them from a key northern stronghold ahead of national elections.
After a wave of expulsions of black residents by the rebels, the government troops attacked the positions of National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) in the town of Anefis at the start of an operation to retake the key city of Kidal.
“Our troops have engaged armed bandits in the Anefis area who have suffered heavy losses of men and vehicles,” said army spokesman, Souleymane Maiga.
The clashes in Anefis, 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Kidal, were confirmed by the MNLA and a regional military source.
“The Malian army has attacked our positions this morning in Anefis. It decided to resolve the situation through war, and the Malian government will bear the consequences,” MNLA vice-president Mahamadou Djeri Maiga told Agence France Presse (AFP).
Maiga said the army was using “heavy weaponry” and vowed that the MNLA would mobilise all its units “to advance on all army positions in the territory of Azawad”, the name given by the Tuareg rebellion to northern Mali.
“We never wanted to resolve the situation by war but, as this is so, we will defend ourselves until the end,” he said from the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, where he is in talks with Malian officials over planned elections in July.
Maiga appealed for foreign forces in Mali to remain neutral and “leave us with the Malian army”.
Former colonial power, France, voiced its support for the army action and called on the rebels to lay down their weapons.
“There can only be one army in Mali, deployed over the whole of the country’s territory,” a foreign ministry spokesman said.
The fighting erupted after more than 100 black inhabitants were expelled from Kidal by the lighter-skinnned MNLA fighters in an act denounced as “ethnic cleansing” by the government, which said the presence of troops in the city is “non-negotiable”.
Malian troops have been deployed in four “battle groups” to encircle Kidal, the army said Tuesday.
The unrest has cast a shadow over the Burkina Faso talks with Malian officials and Tuareg leaders aimed at clearing the way for a presidential election planned for July 28.
The MNLA rose up to fight for independence for the north in January last year and overwhelmed government troops, leading frustrated mid-level officers to launch a coup, which toppled elected president Amadou Toumani Toure.
Together with Al-Qaeda-linked militants, they seized key northern cities, but were then chased out by their former Islamist allies.
France sent troops in January to block an advance by the extremists on the capital Bamako, pushing them out of the main cities and into desert and mountain hideouts.
The French then let the MNLA back into Kidal, ignoring demands by the Malian military to be allowed into the city and raising fears in Bamako, 1,500 kilometres to the southwest, that Paris wants to let the Tuareg rebels keep Kidal as part of an eventual deal for self-rule.
While around 200 French troops control the airport and work with the MNLA in Kidal, the separatists have rejected any suggestion that they should allow the Malian military or government into the city, which has been rocked by violence since the intervention.
In the latest in a string of attacks, a suicide bomber blew himself up Tuesday at the house of an MNLA leader suspected by the Malian army of being an informant for the French military.
Yesterday’s clashes erupted as President Dioncounda Traore and eight other African leaders visited Paris to express their gratitude to President Francois Hollande over France’s intervention in Mali.
Hollande was due to receive UNESCO’s annual peace prize in recognition of what it described as “the solidarity shown by France to the peoples of Africa”.
“If France had not intervened, where would we be?” God alone knows. We can never say it enough: thank you, thank you, thank you to France,” said Benin President Thomas Boni Yayi.
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