PARIS/DAKAR: A French soldier and more than 20 Islamist rebels were killed during what appeared to be the first clashes in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountain range where militants have taken refuge in northern Mali, French officials said on Tuesday.

Speaking on a visit to Athens, French President Francois Hollande said serious fighting had broken out and was continuing in the remote area that straddles the Mali-Algeria border, resulting in several casualties among the rebels and one French legionnaire.

“At this moment we have special forces that are in an extremely precarious zone of the Ifoghas,” Hollande said. “It’s where the terrorist groups that we stopped before have pulled back to.”

The soldier is the second French casualty since Paris intervened in Mali last month when Islamist rebels, after hijacking a rebellion by ethnic Tuareg MNLA separatists to seize control of the north in the confusion following a military coup, pushed south towards the capital Bamako.

Highlighting the risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa since the intervention in its former colony, a French family of seven was kidnapped in northern Cameroon on Tuesday by suspected Nigerian militants.

After driving the bulk of the insurgents from northern towns such as Timbuktu and Gao, France has been focusing its operations on Mali’s remote northeast mountains, where French special forces and Chadian troops are hunting rebel bases.

They believe the rebels are holding some of the eight French hostages, previously seized in region, in hideouts in the Adrar des Ifoghas range.

“We are now in the last phase of the operation,” Hollande said. “That means arresting the last leaders of these groups that are in the extreme north of Mali.”

The French defense ministry said that a parachute regiment of 150 soldiers supported by a heavy vehicle patrol and Mirage fighter jets had come under fire on Tuesday morning.

The French raid was aimed at disrupting the militants and dismantling their camps, the ministry said.

“The French troops was able to locate terrorist elements in their hideout, to chase them and to kill more than 20 of them,” it said.

ROCKET LAUNCHERS FOUND

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 U.N.-backed AFISMA force, which is expected to exceed 8,000 soldiers and is drawn mainly from Mali’s West African neighbors.

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.

But showing just how well-armed the insurgents are, the French defense ministry said earlier on Tuesday it had found three abandoned Russian-made rocket launchers left behind by Islamists near Bourem.

The BM-21 launch vehicles add to a collection of rockets, boxes of ammunition and accessories previously found in other towns and in all likelihood seized from Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi and after Malian forces retreated last year.

“You have the full spectrum,” James Bevan, head of Conflict Armament Research, a group that identifies and tracks weapons, told Reuters after viewing photos of an abandoned cache in Diabaly earlier this month.

“This is pretty heavy ordnance – a level that would achieve parity with or even out gun most West African militaries.”

TIMBUKTU, Mali: French President Francois Hollandebathed in the cheers and accolades of the thousands of people of this embattled city on Saturday, making a triumphant stop six days after French forces parachuted into Timbuktu to liberate the fabled city from the radical Islamists occupying it.

His arrival comes three weeks after France unilaterally launched a military intervention in order to stem the advance of the al-Qaida-linked fighters, and since then French troops have succeeded in ousting the rebels from the three main northern cities they occupied, including Timbuktu.

“Alongside the Malians and the Africans, we have liberated this town. Today Timbuktu. Tomorrow Kidal. And others are still to come,” Hollande told the French troops who stood at attention on the tarmac of the city’s airport. They secured the airfield on Monday, after special forces parachuted onto the dunes just north of the city. They were joined by 600 infantrymen, who came in by land in a convoy of armored cars. “You have accomplished an exceptional mission.”

Thousands of people stood elbow-to-elbow behind a perimeter line in downtown Timbuktu, hoisting the homemade French flags they had prepared for Hollande’s arrival. The swatches of red, white and blue fabric were sown together by hand, and held up by sticks. Others painted the three colors on pieces of paper, and held them aloft as the president’s convoy rolled into the sand-blanketed square.

Women wore vibrantly-colored African prints, and bared their midriffs, their arms and their backs, after nearly a year of being forced to wear a colorless, all-enveloping veil. They danced as men played the drums — a loud, raucous celebration after months of privation.

Fatou Traore, a 25-year-old student screamed out her thanks as the French president stepped out of an armored Toyota V8 all-terrain vehicle. “It’s the president of France who has freed us from the prison we have lived in for the past 10 months,” she said, emotions overtaking her, as she laughed and cried at the same time.

In a sign of how tense the city remains, Hollande arrived with what looked like a private army. Soldiers holding bomb-sniffing dogs and at least a dozen armored personnel carriers patrolled the square in front of the library of ancient manuscripts which Hollande visited during his two-hour stop in the city.

Just before French troops arrived in Timbuktu last week, the retreating Islamic extremists set fire to a portion of the collection at the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research. It was their final blow, not just to Mali but to the world. The oldest manuscripts in the repository date back nearly 1,000 years, and are crucial to Africa’s identity, because they show that the continent had a written record, not just an oral history, said the library’s acting director Abdoulaye Cisse.

Although an inventory has not yet been completed, the director believes less than 5 percent of the library’s priceless manuscripts were destroyed, because the majority of the library was spirited out of the library and hidden hundreds of miles away in the capital, said Cisse.

Despite the outpouring of joy, many expressed worry about France’s long-term intentions. Mali’s military has proved to be no match for the better-armed Islamic extremists, who seized a territory equal in size to France last year, after the army simply abandoned their posts. Hollande made clear that France intends to hand off the control of the recuperated terrain to Mali’s military, and to the African troops pledged by neighboring countries.

“Now, it’s the Malians who have the responsibility to assure the transition, and especially the security, of their country,” he said at the airport. Asked by reporters how soon French troops will begin to draw down from Timbuktu, he said: “The handover is soon enough.”

Around 800 French soldiers are still stationed in Timbuktu, out of a total of 3,500 taking part in the operation codenamed Serval, after a sub-Saharan wildcat.

“If I could have one wish, it would be that the French army stays in the Sahara, that they create a base here,” said Moustapha Ben Essayati, one of the turbaned dignitaries who lined up to shake the French leader’s hand in front of one of Timbuktu’s ancient mosques. “I’m really frightened that if they leave, the jihadists will come back. If France had not intervened in Konna, we would no longer be talking about Mali,” he said, naming the town whose seizure by the Islamists last month prompted Hollande to launch the intervention on Jan. 11.

The president is also visiting Bamako, the capital of Mali.

As Hollande’s convoy rolled out of town on the carpet of sand that leads to the airport, the French president passed the billboards erected by the Islamic rebels, saying: “The city of Timbuktu was founded on Islam, and will be judged on Islamic law.” He passed storefronts where advertisements were blotted out, because they showed figures of women. The occupiers banned music and alcohol, smoking and dancing, playing football, and wearing jewelry, makeup or perfume. They lashed women who showed so much as a centimeter of skin, amputated the hands of thieves, and stoned a couple to death, because they had had children out of wedlock.

“We have just spent 10 months in hell. Everything that demarcates the liberty of man was forbidden to us. We couldn’t smoke, we couldn’t listen to music, we couldn’t wear the clothes we wanted to wear,” Ben Essayati said.

One of the thousands of people who came out to see Hollande on Saturday took the time to write out a personal message, penned on a piece of particle board, which he hoisted above his head. It said: “Hollande, for us you represent the angel which stopped the calamity.”

SEVARE, Mali: French and Malian forces pushed toward the fabled desert town of Timbuktu on Sunday, as the two-week-long French mission gathered momentum against the Islamist extremists who have ruled the north for more than nine months.
So far the French forces have met little resistance from the militants, though it remains unclear what battles may await them farther north. The Malian military blocked dozens of international journalists from trying to travel toward Timbuktu.
Lt. Col. Diarran Kone, a spokesman for Mali’s defense minister, declined to give details Sunday about the advance on Timbuktu, citing the security of an ongoing military operation.
Timbuktu’s mayor, Ousmane Halle, is in the capital, Bamako, and he told The Associated Press he had no information about the remote town, where phone lines have been cut for days.
A convoy of about 15 vehicles transporting international journalists also was blocked Sunday afternoon in Konna, some 186 miles (300 kilometers) south of Timbuktu.
The move on Timbuktu comes a day after the French announced they had seized the airport and a key bridge in Gao, one of the other northern provincial capitals under the grip of radical Islamists.
“People were coming out into the streets to greet the arrival of the troops and celebrate,” said Hassane Maiga, a resident of Gao. “At night, youth from Gao went out alongside the Malian military. They scoured homes in search of the Islamists and the youth smashed the houses.”
French and Malian forces were patrolling Gao Sunday afternoon searching for remnants of the Islamists and maintaining control of the bridge and airport, said Kone, the Mali military spokesman.
The French special forces, which had stormed in by land and by air, had come under fire in Gao from “several terrorist elements” that were later “destroyed,” the French military said in a statement on its website Saturday.
In a later press release entitled “French and Malian troops liberate Gao,” the French ministry of defense said they brought back the town’s mayor, Sadou Diallo, who had fled to Bamako.
However, a Gao official interviewed by telephone by The Associated Press said late Saturday that coalition forces so far only controlled the airport, the bridge and surrounding neighborhoods. And in Paris, a defense ministry official clarified that the city had not been fully liberated, and that the process of freeing Gao was continuing.
Both officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Gao, the largest city in northern Mali, was seized by a mixture of al-Qaida-linked Islamist fighters more than nine months ago along with the other northern provincial capitals of Kidal and Timbuktu.
The rebel group that turned Gao into a replica of Afghanistan under the Taliban has close ties to Moktar Belmoktar, the Algerian national who has long operated in Mali and who last week claimed responsibility for the terror attack on a BP-operated natural gas plant in Algeria.
His fighters are believed to include Algerians, Egyptians, Mauritanians, Libyans, Tunisians, Pakistanis and even Afghans.
Since France began its military operation, the Islamists have retreated from three small towns in central Mali: Diabaly, Konna and Douentza. However, the Islamists still control much of the north, including Kidal.
The Pentagon said late Saturday that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told France the United States will aid the French military with aerial refueling missions.
U.S. aerial refueling planes would be a boost to air support for French ground forces as they enter vast areas of northern Mali, which is the size of Texas, that are controlled by al-Qaida-linked extremists.
The U.S. was already helping France by transporting French troops and equipment to the West African nation. However, the U.S. government has said it cannot provide direct aid to the Malian military because the country’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a coup last March.
The Malian forces, however, are now expected to get more help than initially promised from neighboring nations.
Col. Shehu Usman Abdulkadir, a Nigerian in charge of regional forces heading to Mali, told The Associated Press that the African force will be expanded from an anticipated 3,200 troops to some 5,700 — a figure that does not include the 2,200 soldiers promised by Chad.
Most analysts had said the earlier figure was far too small to confront the Islamists given the huge territory they hold.

France, warning that Islamist control over Mali’s vast deserts and rugged mountains threatened the security of Africa and the West, had targeted Diabaly in an eighth day of air strikes to dislodge hardened al Qaeda-linked fighters there.
“They (the Islamists) fled the town, dressed as civilians, early this morning. They abandoned their weapons and ammunition,” a Malian military source said.
The source said government soldiers had not yet entered the town but Diabaly Mayor Oumar Diakite told Reuters that troops were there carrying out mopping-up operations after a French air strike earlier in the day.
Diakite said residents had dug up some of the Islamist fighters’ weapons caches. “There are lots of burned-out vehicles that the Islamists tried to hide in the orchards,” he added.
A commander in the Malian army in nearby Markala said ground forces were operating around Diabaly, which lies about 360 km (220 miles) northeast of Bamako, but could not confirm that the town, seized by Islamists on Monday, had been recaptured.
French armed forces spokesman Thierry Burkhard said he was not aware of any operation in the area.
If officially confirmed, it would be a second military success for the French-led military alliance after Islamists on Thursday night abandoned Konna, to the north of the central garrison town of Sevare.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has appealed for access to Konna but said it has so far been refused despite days of talks with all armed forces.
Bolstered with weapons seized from Libya after the 2011 fall of Muammar Gaddafi, the Islamist alliance of al Qaeda’s North African wing AQIM and home-grown Malian groups Ansar Dine and MUJWA has put up staunch resistance.
The progress of French and Malian troops has been slowed also because insurgents had taken refuge in the homes of civilians, residents said.
The military operation is expected to force hundreds of thousands more people from their homes, on top of the 400,000 that have fled since a rebellion erupted last year.
French President Francois Hollande ordered the intervention on the grounds that the Islamists could turn northern Mali into a “terrorist state” radiating threats beyond its borders.
Residents in Markala, where the French have set up the forward base at an army camp overlooking the Niger River, said they were relieved to see French soldiers.
“The past few days have been very stressful before the arrival of the French troops,” said Mohamud Sangare, who runs a hardware store in the center of the town.
Despite threats from militants to attack French interests around the world, France, which now has 1,800 troops on the ground in Mali, has pledged to keep them there until stability returns to the poor, landlocked West African nation
In the first apparent retaliatory attack, al Qaeda-associated militants took dozens of foreigners hostage on Wednesday at a natural gas plant in Algeria, blaming Algerian cooperation with France.
Algerian security sources said that about 20 foreigners were still being held on Friday at the facility where some 30 hostages, along with at least 18 of their captors, were killed during a storming of the complex by Algerian armed forces on Thursday.
ECOWAS TROOPS POUR IN
A total of 2,500 French troops are expected in Mali but Paris is keen to swiftly hand the mission over to West Africa’s ECOWAS bloc, which in December secured a U.N. mandate for a 3,300-strong mission to help Mali recapture its north.
The first contingents of Togolese and Nigerian troops arrived in Bamako on Thursday. Nigerien and Chadian forces were massing in Niger, Mali’s neighbor to the east.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, in a letter to the Senate requesting approval to raise Nigerian’s force to 1,200 soldiers, said Mali was a threat to the whole of the region.
“The crisis in Mali, if not brought under control, may spill over to Nigeria and other West African countries with negative consequences on our collective security, political stability and development efforts,” he said. His request was approved.
The scrambling of the U.N.-mandated African mission, which previously had not been due to deploy until September, will hearten former colonial power France. With Chad promising 2,000 soldiers, African states have now pledged more than 5,000.
The head of Malian military operations, Colonel Didier Daco, said that Islamists were abandoning their 4×4 pick-up trucks, which made them vulnerable in the desert to French air strikes, to fight in the bush on foot.
Military experts say France and its African allies must now capitalize on a week of hard-hitting air strikes by seizing the initiative on the ground to prevent the insurgents from withdrawing into the remote desert and reorganizing.
“The more painful the militants can make the push into northern Mali and subsequent pacification effort, the more they can hope to turn French, Western and African public opinion against the intervention in the country,” global intelligence consultancy Stratfor wrote in a report on Friday.
MALIANS WELCOME FRENCH FORCES
With African states facing huge logistical and transport challenges, Germany promised two Transall military transport aircraft to help fly in their soldiers.
Britain has supplied two C-17 military transport planes to ferry in French armored vehicles and medical supplies. Spain’s government said it would provide a Hercules transport plane and dozens of instructors to help the Mali operation.
The United States is considering logistical and surveillance support but has ruled out dispatching U.S. troops.
Reuters journalists travelling north of Bamako saw residents welcoming French troops and, in places, French and Malian flags hung side by side. “Thank you France, thank you Francois Hollande,” read one national newspaper headline on Friday.
“They will do it. We’re confident that they will do it well,” said Bamako resident Omar Kamasoko. “They came a bit late, it’s true, but they came. We’re grateful and we’re behind him.”
Mali’s recent woes began with a coup in Bamako last March after two decades of stable democracy. In the ensuing chaos, Islamist forces seized large swathes of the north and imposed a severe rule reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban.
The U.N. refugee agency said on Friday that refugees from northern Mali had given horrific accounts of amputations and executions, as well as the recruitment of child soldiers.
The agency said it expected 400,000 Malians to flee the fighting in coming months, placing great strain on the scant resources of the arid, impoverished Sahel region.
(Additional reporting by Adama Diarra in Bamako, Benkoro Sangare in Niono, Noel Tadegnon in Lome, Leigh Thomas in Paris, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and David Lewis in Dakar; Writing by Daniel Flynn and David Lewis; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

A contingent of around 100 Togolese troops landed in Bamako and was due to be joined by Nigerian forces already en route. Nigerien and Chadian forces were massing in Niger, Mali’s neighbor to the east.
The scrambling of the U.N.-mandated African mission, which previously had not been due for deployment until September, will be a boon for France, the former colonial power in Mali.
French troops, which had moved northwards from Bamako in an armored column on Tuesday, pinned down some Islamist fighters in the small town of Diabaly. But French forces held back from launching an all-out assault as the insurgents had taken refuge in the homes of civilians, residents said.
“The Islamists are still in Diabaly. They are very many of them. Every time they hear a plane overhead, they run into homes, traumatizing the people,” said one woman who fled the town with her three children overnight.
Residents in the town of Konna, to the north of the central garrison town of Sevare, said Islamists had fled as Malian soldiers backed by French troops deployed.
“Life is difficult for the people of northern Mali and the international community has the duty to help these people,” said Togolese Lieutenant Colonel Mawoute Bayassim Gnamkoulamba.
“That is why we think that it is necessary for us to protect Mali and we are proud today to fulfill that mission.”
French forces, numbering some 1,400 soldiers, began ground operations on Wednesday against an Islamist coalition grouping al Qaeda’s North African wing AQIM and the home-grown Ansar Dine and MUJWA militants.
President Francois Hollande ordered the intervention on the grounds that the Islamists who had taken over the poor West African country’s north could turn it into a “terrorist state” which would radiate a threat beyond its borders.
Hollande has pledged they will stay until stability returns to Mali but, in the first apparent retaliatory attack, al Qaeda-linked militants took dozens of foreigners hostage at a gas plant in Algeria, blaming Algerian cooperation with France.
A total of 2,500 French troops are expected in Mali but Paris is keen to swiftly hand the mission over to West Africa’s ECOWAS bloc, which in December secured a U.N. mandate for a 3,300-strong mission to help Mali recapture its north.
A rebel push into central Mali was last week halted by bombings by French aircraft and the deployment of ground troops.
A convoy of armored vehicles, fuel tankers and ambulances and around 200 soldiers from Mali’s eastern neighbor Niger was positioned at that eastern border, witnesses said.
A Reuters witness at the scene said heavy weapons fire rang out as troops tested artillery.
Communications with residents in Islamist-controlled towns have become more difficult as some mobile phone towers have stopped working. Residents said rebel fighters are suspicious of anyone using phones, fearing they are passing information to the enemy.
“There are no longer any police stations. (The Islamists) have dispersed across the city, mixing in with the population,” said Ibrahim Mamane, a resident from the town of Gao who reached the border with Niger.
“The population is ready and is waiting for the French forces with open arms. If they attack Gao, the people will fight the Islamists with their bare hands,” he added.
Reuters journalists travelling north of Bamako saw residents welcoming French troops and, in places, French and Malian flags hung side by side.
AFRICAN TALIBAN
Mali’s recent troubles began with a coup in Bamako last March, ending a period of stable rule that saw a series of elections. In the confusion that followed, Islamist forces seized large swathes of the north and imposed a strict rule reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Military experts say France and its African allies must now capitalize on a week of hard-hitting air strikes by seizing the initiative on the ground to prevent the insurgents from withdrawing into the desert and reorganizing.
“The whole world clearly needs to unite and do much more than is presently being done to contain terrorism,” Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said.
Diabaly is a country town with a population of about 35,000, about 360 km (220 miles) from Bamako and near the border with Mauritania, where AQIM has bases.
A spokesman for MUJWA confirmed that their positions in Diabaly had been fired on but said French forces had not penetrated the town itself.
Diabaly Mayor Salif Ouedrago, who fled on Wednesday, told Malian state radio: “There were deaths on the side of the jihadists. They buried their dead yesterday.”
Meanwhile, the Malian army rushed reinforcements to a town closer to Bamako on Thursday after Islamist fighters were spotted near the frontier with Mauritania.
“Banamba is in a state of alert. Reinforcements have been sent. Nigerian troops expected to arrive in Bamako today could be deployed there to secure the zone,” a senior Malian military source told Reuters.
An inhabitant of Banamba, 140 km (90 miles) from the capital, reported the arrival of soldiers after insurgents were seen in the Boron border area.
With African states facing huge logistical and transport challenges, Germany promised two Transall military transport planes to help fly in their soldiers.
Britain has supplied two C-17 military transport planes to ferry in French armored vehicles and medical supplies. The United States is considering logistical and surveillance support but has ruled out sending in U.S. troops.
(Additional reporting by Tiemoko Diallo and Adama Diarra in Bamako, Benkoro Sangare in Niono, Noel Tadegnon in Lome and David Lewis in Dakar; Writing by Daniel Flynn and David Lewis; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Their presumed destination was the town of Diabaly, where fleeing residents said Islamist extremists had taken over their homes and were preventing other people from leaving. They said the militants were melting into the population and moving only in small groups on streets in the mud-walled neighborhoods to avoid being targeted by the French.

“They have beards. And they wear boubous (a flowing robe). No one approaches them. Everyone is afraid,” said Ibrahim Komnotogo, who was out of town when the militants seized Diabaly over the weekend but kept in contact by telephone with other residents.

In apparent retaliation for the French offensive, the same group controlling northern Mali occupied a natural gas complex in neighboring Algeria, taking dozens of people hostage, including Americans. Two foreigners were killed.

French ground operations in Mali began overnight, France’s military chief of staff, Adm. Edouard Guillaud, said on Europe 1 television Wednesday. He stressed that French infantry units “will be fighting directly in the coming hours.”

Armored vehicles loaded with French troops were seen heading toward Niono, a town 340 kilometers (210 miles) northeast of the capital, Bamako. Some 70 kilometers (45 miles) northeast of Niono lies Diabaly, with a population of 35,000.

Over the weekend, dozens of rebel vehicles cut off the road to Diabaly, seizing the town and its strategic military camp. French warplanes have since carried out airstrikes on the camp.

Oumar Ould Hamaha, whose fighters are believed to be among those who seized Diabaly, said that a convoy of armored French vehicles attempted to enter the town to take it back. He said the Islamists repelled the French after an intense and close combat.

“I confirm that France came in by land, but they failed. … There was a combat that was (extremely close). Between 200 and 500 meters away,” Hamaha said.

His version of events could not be verified.

Col. Thierry Burkhard, a spokesman for the French military in Paris, denied that French troops were in Diabaly or that they were 500 meters from rebel lines.

“The French army did not deploy units in the region of Diabaly,” Burkhard said. Troops were dozens of kilometers from Diabaly, he said, refusing to provide a location.

Hamaha is a leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, one of the rebel groups controlling Mali’s northern half. He is also a close associate of Moktar Belmokar, a leader of a local al-Qaida cell who claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of foreigners in Algeria.

Speaking to The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location, Hamaha said the kidnapping was retribution for the French-led attack on the Islamists in Mali.

“We have a struck a blow to the heart (of the international community),” he said. “It’s the United Nations that gave the green light to this intervention and all Western countries are now going to pay a price. We are now globalizing our conflict.”

A former French colony, Mali once enjoyed a reputation as one of West Africa’s most stable democracies with majority of its 15 million people practicing a moderate form of Islam. That changed in April 2012, when Islamist extremists took over the main cities in the country’s north amid disarray following a military coup, and began enforcing strict Shariah law.

Hamaha’s boast comes amid warnings from security experts that the extremists, including al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and other groups which share al-Qaida’s goals, are carving out their own territory in northern Mali from where they can plot terror attacks in Africa and Europe. Estimates of how many fighters the Islamists have range from less than 1,000 to several thousand; the militants are well-armed and funded and include recruits from other countries.

Despite training from U.S. and other Western advisers, the Mali army has been ineffective in fighting the militants.

Last December, the U.N. Security Council passed a cautious resolution, outlining steps that needed to be taken before an international military intervention, one which diplomats said would not occur before at least September.

But in a surprise move last week, French President Francois Hollande authorized airstrikes in Mali to stop a sudden southward push by three Islamist rebel groups, including Hamaha’s. The Islamists warned that France had “opened the doors of hell” and that all French nationals would pay, as would any country that helped the military intervention.

France’s allies have offered vocal support for the country’s military operation in Mali, but when it comes to sending troops or weapons, they are agreeing to the bare minimum: a transport plane here and there, a handful of support staff and a lot of promises to think about it.

France has upwards of 800 troops in Mali, and expects to ramp up to a total of 2,500 that will include French Foreign Legionnaires. It has committed helicopter gunships, fighter jets, surveillance planes and refueling tankers.

As the French moved north, some terrified Malians were fleeing south. A trickle of refugees have left Diabaly on foot over the past few days and went to Niono, according to residents there.

It apparently was no easy task.

Komnotogo, who heads a USAID-financed rice agriculture project, said Qaida-linked rebels sealed off Diabaly’s roads and were preventing people from leaving.

Komnotogo said he was last able to speak to most of his 20 employees and contractors on Tuesday — after which the telephone network was cut in Diabaly. He fears the Islamists are planning to hide and use the population as a human shield.

“The jihadists have split up. They don’t move around in big groups. … They are out in the streets, in fours, and fives and sixes, and they are living inside the most populated neighborhoods,” he said, explaining that they had taken over the homes of people who managed to flee before the road was cut off.

French warplanes bombarded the military camp, but there have been no airstrikes inside the actual town, which begins at the eastern wall of the garrison. Residents have evacuated the Diabaly neighborhood called Bordeaux, after its sister city in France, which is only 500 meters (yards) from the camp, Komnotogo said. They have moved mostly into a quarter called Berlin, about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from the military installation.

The Islamists “are preventing the population from leaving. We have been trying to get our employees out, but they can’t leave,” said Komnotogo. “They have parked their pickup trucks inside the courtyards of empty homes.”

Tidiane Diarra, one of Komnotogo’s employees, who distributes water to rice cultivators, arrived in Niono on Wednesday. He said he was able to escape because he was not in Diabaly but in his home village 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) away. From there, no one stopped him from leaving.

The fighters, he said, are going to be difficult for the French to weed out, because they are now traveling inside the town on motorbikes, leaving their pickup trucks parked elsewhere. They appear to be melting into the population.

The head of France’s military said it is plausible that the extremists would be willing to hide behind civilians. Guillaud said the militant groups have a history of taking human shields and that France would do its utmost to make sure civilians are not wrongly targeted.

“When in doubt, we will not fire,” he said. He added that the French continued their airstrikes overnight on Tuesday to Wednesday. Targets destroyed so far include training camps, logistical depots, command centers and armored vehicles that the jihadists had seized from Mali’s government forces.

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Associated Press writers Lori Hinnant in Paris , Aomar Ouali in Algiers, Algeria and Paul Schemm in Rabat, Morocco contributed to this report from Paris.