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French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault issued the statement yesterday after French airstrikes forced out the al-Qaeda-linked fighters from northern areas, clearing the way for the ground offensive.
Ayrault said the troops were currently “around Gao and (will be) soon near Timbuktu”, further west.
Timbuktu, which has served as a centre of Islamic education for centuries, has been under the control of rebels for about 10 months.
Meanwhile, the US has agreed to Paris’ request to help provide vital refuelling for the ongoing French air offensive in Mali.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian on Saturday that Washington would send tankers to help refuel French jets, a Pentagon spokesman said.
They also discussed plans for the Americans to transport troops from African nations, including Chad and Togo, to facilitate the international effort in Mali.
“The objective is that the African multinational force being put together be able to take over, and that Mali be able to begin a process of political stabilisation,” Ayrault said.
A Malian security source in Gao said by telephone that a first contingent of Malian, Chadian and Niger troops had arrived in Gao to help secure it, having been flown in from Niamey, capital of neighbouring Niger.
Other soldiers from Chad and Niger were moving by land towards the Malian border from the Niger town of Ouallam, which lies about 100km southeast of Gao.
The United States and Europe back the UN-mandated Mali operation as a counterstrike against the threat of Islamist jihadists using the West African state’s inhospitable Sahara desert as a launching pad for international attacks.
In an overnight assault on Gao backed by French warplanes and helicopters, French special forces seized the town’s airport and a key bridge over the River Niger, killing an estimated dozen Islamist fighters without suffering any losses or injuries, the French army said.
“The Malian army and the French control Gao today,” Malian army spokesman Lieutenant Diaran Kone said.
News that the French and Malian troops were at Gao, the largest northern town held by the Islamists, came as African states struggled to deploy their intervention force in Mali, known as AFISMA, under a UN mandate.
Regional army chiefs said on Saturday that a total of 7 700 African soldiers would be dispatched, up from 5 700.
Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Burundi, Guinea and Uganda are due to join the mission, but it was not clear if progress had been made at meetings in Abidjan or Addis Ababa to overcome gaps in transport, equipment and financing.
French army spokesman Colonel Thierry Burkhard said French forces had come under fire from rebel fighters inside Gao, but that both the bridge and airport runway were undamaged.
In Paris, the French Defence Ministry said Malian and French troop reinforcements were brought in and that soldiers from Chad and Niger, who have experience in desert warfare, were also flown in.
To the west, French forces recaptured Lere, on the road to Timbuktu, and were advancing, a Malian military source said, asking not be named.
For two weeks, French jets and helicopter gunships have been harrying the retreating Islamists, attacking their vehicles, command posts and weapons depots. The French action had stymied a sudden Islamist offensive launched in early January that had threatened Bamako, Mali’s capital in the south of the country.
Reacting to the French-led offensive, one of the leaders of the alliance of Islamist groups occupying Mali’s north promised resistance to what he called the “new Crusader aggression”, in comments published by Al Jazeera’s Arabic website.
Yahya Abu Al-Hamman, leader in the Sahel of al Qaeda’s North African wing AQIM, which along with Malian militant group Ansar Dine and AQIM splinter MUJWA occupies Mali’s north, said a “Jihadist Islamist emirate” would be created in the territory.
Washington and European governments, while providing airlift and intelligence support to the anti-militant offensive in Mali, are not planning to send in any combat troops. — AlJazeera/AP
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