BAMAKO, Jan 14: Islamist forces on Monday seized control of a town in a fresh attack in Mali’s government-held south and vowed to strike “at the heart” of France as it waged a fourth day of air strikes against them.

A local government official reported the Islamists had seized Diabaly, some 400km north of the capital Bamako.

Meanwhile French warplanes launched air strikes on the town of Douentza, 800km north of Bamako, residents reported.

“Planes repeatedly bombed the Islamists’ headquarters in Douentza. It was destroyed but the Islamists were not there,” said a resident on condition of anonymity. Other locals confirmed the report saying the extremists had already fled.

France launched the operation alongside the Malian army on Friday as the militants threatened to advance on Bamako after months of torpor over a planned African military intervention to drive out the Islamists.

Experts had said a regional operation could only get off the ground in September.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian confirmed the Islamist victory in Diabaly, which put them on the road leading directly to the capital.

“We knew there would be a counter-offensive towards the west,” he told BFM Television. “They have taken Diabaly, which is a small town, after heavy fighting and resistance from the Malian army, which was insufficiently equipped at that exact point.”

He earlier told journalists that while the Islamists had “retreated” in the east of Mali, French forces were facing a “difficult” situation in the west where the militants are well armed.

The attack was led by Abou Zeid, a leader of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), said a regional security source on condition of anonymity.

On Sunday, French Rafale fighter planes struck bases used by Al Qaeda-linked fighters in Gao and Kidal, two of the main towns in northern Mali.

Sixty Islamists were killed in Gao alone on Sunday, according to residents and a regional security source. A French helicopter pilot was also killed in fighting, according to the French defence ministry.

French warplanes also attacked rebel stockpiles of munitions and fuel near Kidal, a stronghold of militant group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith). And they hit the town of Nampala some 50km north of Diabaly, as well as a base in Lere, near the border with Mauritania.

A leader of one of the Islamist groups occupying Mali’s vast north vowed revenge against France, which stepped up security on home soil.

“France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France,” said a leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an offshoot of AQIM, threatening the country’s interests in Bamako, the rest of Africa, and Europe.

Another MUJAO leader Omar Ould Hamaha, nicknamed “Redbeard”, warned on radio Europe 1 that France had “opened the doors of hell” with its intervention and faced a situation “worse than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia”. In Bamako the French high school was closed on Monday as a “precautionary measure”, French Ambassador Christian Royer said.

MUJAO’s Abou Dardar also referred to France’s seven hostages held in Mali. “We will make a statement on the hostages today. From today all the Mujahideen are together.”—AFP