The French military intervention turns away from cities and toward the radicals’ desert outposts
French airstrikes targeted the fuel depots and desert hideouts of Islamic extremists in northern Mali overnight on Monday, as a military spokeswoman said that French forces plan to hand control of Timbuktu to the Malian army this week.
After taking control of the key cities of northern Mali, forcing the Islamic rebels to retreat into the desert, the French military intervention is turning away from the cities and targeting the fighters’ remote outposts to prevent them bases from being used as Saharan launch pads for international terrorism.
The French plan to leave the city of Timbuktu on Thursday, February 7, a spokeswoman for the armed forces in the city said on Monday.
French soldiers took the city last week after Islamic extremists withdrew. Now the French military said it intends to move out of Timbuktu in order to push farther northeast to the strategic city of Gao.
Keywords: Mali conflict, Timbuktu liberation, Frence forces, al Qaeda
The French forces were sucessful to stop the advance of the Islamic terrorist forces and driving them away from the cities and towns in Mali. But we have not heard yet the number of the Islamic terrorists killed, wounded or captured. The Islamic terrorists just moved from populated areas to the remote isolated Saharan desert and the neighboring countries. The Mali and ECOWAS forces have a big job yet to come for the elimination of the Islamic terrorists in Mali. The neighboring countries in the ECOWAS, Sahil-Sahara and Arab countries have to join forces against the Islamic militants in those countries to remove the menace of Islamic terrorism, after the French forces leave Mali. Otherwise the spill over of the diaspora of Islamic terrorists from Mali will remain a menace to world peace.
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