African Bloc Leads Ceasefire Talks in Rebel-Hit Mali
The head of the African Union launched talks Friday with Tuareg rebels who humiliated Mali's army in an offensive in the northern desert, as the U.N. warned of growing numbers fleeing the fighting.
Around 20 Malian soldiers have been killed and 30 wounded since Wednesday as insurgents captured the flashpoint northern town of Kidal and the smaller settlement of Menaka, according to the defense ministry.
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the head of the African Union and leader of neighboring Mauritania, arrived in Kidal on Friday "in the context of finding a solution to the crisis", a diplomatic source told AFP.
Abdel Aziz cut short a visit to Rwanda to travel to Malian capital Bamako on Thursday, where he urged the authorities to enter into dialogue with the rebels.
On Friday, he traveled by private jet and then helicopter to Kidal, 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) northeast of Bamako, accompanied by Bert Koenders, the head of MINUSMA, the UN mission in Mali.
"Aziz has come to obtain a ceasefire from the rebel groups, and the resumption of talks with the Malian government," an aide told AFP.
The Malian army has been pinned back since Saturday by a coalition of several armed groups, including Tuareg separatists.
The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) says 40 Malian soldiers have been killed and 70 taken prisoner since hostilities began on Saturday, with dozens of vehicles seized along with several tons of weapons and ammunition.
France has echoed calls by the Malian government for an immediate ceasefire in the rebel-infested north of its former colony, pressing for an urgent resumption of talks between militant groups and Bamako.
The fighting began outside the regional governor's office in Kidal on Saturday, coinciding with a trip to the town by Prime Minister Moussa Mara.
Rebels exchanged fire with Malian troops before kidnapping more than 30 civil servants, holding them for 48 hours before letting them go.
The town is the cradle of Mali's Tuareg separatist movement, which claims independence for a vast swathe of northern desert it calls "Azawad" and which has launched several rebellions since the 1960s.
The U.N.'s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday that "small but growing numbers of people" were fleeing southwards, with some heading to Niger, Burkina Faso and other neighboring countries.
"Our partner in northern Mali... estimates that Kidal town has so far seen 3,000 people fleeing affected neighborhoods. People are mainly heading to the city outskirts or in the direction of Gao, where 400 people have so far arrived," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told a briefing in Geneva.
"These people told our teams they had been forced to hide in their homes in Kidal for two days without food, and while waiting for the fighting to decrease. They also said that more people are poised to flee both Kidal and Menaka to Gao."
Edwards said buses leaving Gao for Bamako were "packed with people worried that the city might be attacked".
Inhabitants of Kidal and Menaka, a town 660 kilometers (300 miles) to the south, told AFP there had been no fresh outbreak of fighting on Friday morning.
"On the ground, it's quiet. Aside from these two localities, armed groups don't have any real hold on any other position either. The Malian army is in strategic locations like Almoustarat and Anefis," a foreign military source based in the north told AFP.
Meanwhile Malian government officials told AFP strategic errors were to blame for the army's defeat in Kidal.
"There was a big failure in the chain of command... It is clear that someone in the army took an initiative that was not their's to take," a senior Malian government official told AFP.
The MNLA ended a nine-month occupation of the governor's offices in November last year as one of the conditions of a June peace deal that paved the way for presidential elections.
But the process deeply divided the MNLA, whose ultimate goal is the independence of Azawad, the minority Tuareg name for their homeland in northern Mali.
Up until the agreement, the Tuareg group had refused to allow any government soldiers or civil servants into Kidal.
The country descended into crisis in January 2012, when the MNLA launched the latest in a string of Tuareg insurgencies in the north.
A subsequent coup in Bamako led to chaos, and militants linked to Al-Qaida overpowered the Tuareg to seize control of Mali's northern desert.
A French-led military operation launched in January 2013 ousted the extremists, but sporadic attacks have continued, and the Tuareg demand for autonomy has not been resolved.
Source: Agence France Presse
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