Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
French soldiers rode in armored vehicles as they left Bamako and started their deployment to the north of Mali on Wednesday.
BAMAKO, Mali — French soldiers battled armed Islamist occupiers of a desert village in central Mali on Wednesday, a Malian army colonel said, in the first direct ground combat involving Western troops since France launched its military operation here last week to help wrest this nation back from an Islamist advance.
The Malian colonel said his army’s ground troops had joined the French forces and ringed the village of Diabaly, which Islamist fighters had seized the day before. Now, he said, they were engaged in fighting to extricate the militants, who had taken over homes and ensconced themselves.
“It’s a very specialized kind of war,” said the colonel, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The town is surrounded.”
The ground fighting expanded the confrontation between the Islamists and the French forces, who had previously conducted aerial assaults after President François Hollande of France ordered an intervention in Mali last Friday to thwart a broader push by Islamist rebels controlling the north of the country.
The battle in Diabaly came as news reports from the region said that Islamist militants affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb had seized a foreign-run gas field near the Algeria-Libya border, hundreds of miles away, and had seized foreign hostages, including Americans, in retaliation for the French intervention in Mali and for Algeria’s cooperation in that effort. The Algerian state-run news agency quoted regional government officials as say ingthat about 20 foreigners had been seized, including American, British, French, Norwegian and Japanese citizens. It also said that two people had been killed, at least one of them British.
The number of hostages and their nationalities could not be confirmed independently. Japanese officials acknowledged that Japanese citizens were involved in the hostage situation, and the Irish foreign ministry said one Irish citizen had been kidnapped. The British foreign office also said in a statement that “British nationals are caught up in this incident,” which it described as “ongoing.”
The developments underscored an earlier acknowledgment from the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, that the military campaign to turn back the Islamists and drive them from their redoubts in northern Malian desert would be a protracted one.
“The combat continues and it will be long, I imagine,” he said Wednesday on RTL radio. “Today the ground forces are in the process of deploying,” he said. “Now the French forces are reaching the north.”
Adm. Edouard Guillaud, the French chief of staff, told Europe 1 television that ground operations began overnight.
He accused jihadists of using civilians as human shields and said, “We refuse to put the population at risk. If there is doubt, we will not fire.”
In Paris, Mr. Hollande said Wednesday that he took the decision to intervene last Friday because it was necessary. If he had not done so, it would have been too late. “Mali would have been entirely conquered and the terrorists would today be in a position of strength."
On Tuesday, witnesses in Mali reported, the insurgents had regrouped after French airstrikes and embedded themselves among the population of Diabaly, hiding in the mud and brick houses in the battle zone and thwarting attacks by French warplanes to dislodge them.
“They are in the town, almost everywhere in the town,” said Bekaye Diarra, who owns a pharmacy in Diabaly, which remained under the control of insurgents. “They are installing themselves.”
Benco Ba, a parliamentary deputy there, said residents were fearful of the conflict that had descended on them. “The jihadists are going right into people’s families,” he said. “They have completely occupied the town. They are dispersed. It’s fear, ” he said, as it became
clear that airstrikes alone will probably not be enough to root out these battle-hardened insurgents, who know well the harsh grassland and desert terrain of Mali.
