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With Fighters Gone, Malians Welcome Normal Days With Timbuktu Retaken, France Signals It Plans to Pull Back in Mali
(about 7 hours later)
SÉVARÉ, Mali — Residents of Gao, northern Mali’s largest city, poured out of their homes to celebrate the expulsion of Islamist fighters who had held their town for months, playing the music that had been forbidden under the militants’ harsh interpretation of Islamic rule and dancing in the streets. SEGOU, Mali — French paratroopers arrived in the ancient desert oasis of Timbuktu on Monday, securing its airport and main roads as thousands of residents poured out of its narrow, mud-walled streets to greet French and Malian troops, waving the two countries’ flags, with whoops, cheers and shouts.
“Everyone is in the streets,” a Gao resident, Ibrahim Touré, said in a telephone interview. “It is like a party. There is music. There are drums. It’s freedom.” “Timbuktu has fallen,” said the city’s mayor, Halle Ousmane Cissé, in a telephone interview from the capital, Bamako, where he has been in exile since the Islamist militants took over the city 10 months ago. He said he planned to return to his city on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, French military officials said on Monday that Malian and French troops had taken control of access roads and the airport at Timbuktu, the fabled desert oasis and crossroads of ancient caravan routes, and had “begun” to take over the city itself. The rapid advance to Timbuktu, a day after French and African troops took firm control of the former rebel stronghold of Gao, may spell the beginning of the end of France’s major involvement in the conflict here.
The French troops around Timbuktu had not encountered any armed resistance, after Islamist fighters either fled the city or sought to blend in with the local population, officials said. The French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was a little more cautious than the mayor in his assessment of the situation in Timbuktu on Monday evening, saying on television station TF1: “French and Malian forces are liberating the city. It’s not completely finished, but it’s well on its way.”
"I will indeed refrain from saying, today, that there’s no one left in Timbuktu” the French military spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkard, told reporters Monday, referring to concerns of fighters hiding among the populace. The French president, François Hollande, suggested on Monday that French troops might soon stop their northward advance, leaving it to African soldiers to pursue the militants into their redoubts in the desert north. “We are winning this battle,” Mr. Hollande said in televised remarks. “When I say, ‘We,’ this is the Malian army, this is the Africans, supported by the French.”
With its delicate, mud-walled historic sites and labyrinth of narrow streets, Timbuktu could offer challenging terrain for soldiers trying to secure the city. During the 10 months it has been under Islamist control, dire reports of destruction of the tombs of Sufi saints and other important monuments have filtered back through people fleeing the city. Timbuktu is a protected World Heritage Site, home to thousands of ancient manuscripts collected over centuries. He continued, “Now, the Africans can take over.”
In Gao, east of Timbuktu, celebrations erupted as international forces trying to recapture northern Mali, which has been seized by a mosaic of heavily armed Islamist groups, deployed into the city, one of the principal militant strongholds. Colonel Burkhard said Monday that the Gao was now under the full control of French and African troops, with a force of 450 Malian soldiers joined by small contingents from Niger and Chad. Mr. Hollande said that the difficult task of flushing militants from the vast empty stretches of Mali’s arid northern countryside was the job of African troops. “They’re the ones who will go into the area of the north, which we know is the most difficult because the terrorists are hidden there and can still lead operations that are extremely dangerous for neighboring countries and for Mali,” he said.
French special forces killed about 15 fighters in "brief" but "intense" firefights when they arrived just south of the city late Friday night, and perhaps 10 more militants on Sunday night on the city’s outskirts, he said. Most fighters appear to have fled to the north, he said. Finding these fighters, who have long been accustomed to hiding out in remote areas, has been tough for French troops, who have sophisticated tracking equipment and surveillance drones, said Col. Thierry Burkhard, a French military spokesman, noting that the fighters often travel in civilian vehicles.
People who had been under occupation for nearly a year by Islamist fighters flooded the streets of Gao in jubilation, weeping and shouting to welcome the Malian and French troops who arrived in force on Sunday, residents said. African troops have been trickling into Mali over the last few days from neighboring states, part of what is expected to be a 5,000-member force intended to restore the northern half of the country to government control.
If it can be held, the capture of Gao will be the biggest strategic victory in the battle to retake northern Mali, which began this month when French forces entered the fight to blunt a sudden militant push toward the capital, Bamako. A European Union mission to train several thousand Malian soldiers has yet to begin, however, and any extensive combat operations led by African troops are not expected until August or September, after the brief rainy season.
Gao is the most populous city in Mali’s north, and it endured months of repression under fighters aligned with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The city’s residents were subject to strict rules and harsh punishment, including amputations for suspected thieves and public beatings or whippings for perceived violations of Islamic law. Television footage from Timbuktu captured scenes of jubilation as thousands of people drove cars, trucks and motorbikes through the streets, honking their horns.
Fatou Cissé, a Gao resident reached by telephone, said crowds were chanting “Vive la France!” and singing the Malian national anthem. But there were concerns about the fate of Timbuktu’s trove of historical treasures. Mr. Cissé said someone had burned books at one of the most important libraries in a city famous for its thousands of well-preserved handwritten manuscripts dating as far back as the 13th century.
“I was out there with them,” said Ms. Cissé, who said she was wearing bright wax-print fabric with short sleeves, the kind of clothing that was banned when the city was under militant control. The city’s libraries, along with its mud architecture and the tombs of hundreds of Sufi saints, have made it one of the most important historical sites in Africa. Islamists were said to have smashed many of the city’s tombs, saying that the ancient practice of venerating saints was un-Islamic.
“My head is not covered,” she said. “Girls are out of the house, and they are dancing.” Mr. Cissé said he was told about the fire, which took place three days ago, by a city employee who left Timbuktu on Sunday and was able to call him. The phone lines to the city have been down for more than a week.
Several Gao residents confirmed that a joint French and Malian military convoy toured the city around 4 p.m. on Sunday. Mr. Touré said heavy bombing began late Friday evening and continued into Saturday morning. Other scars of the Islamist occupation were readily visible.
“The explosions were big,” Mr. Touré said, suggesting that the French were targeting rebel fuel depots and arms caches. “Timbuktu was built on Islam and Islamic law will prevail here,” read a slogan scrawled on city walls, according to Agence France-Presse.
Mr. Touré, who grows vegetables for a living, recalled Islamist fighters stealing the small water pump on which his livelihood depended. He said he had been waiting for this day but thought it would be months — possibly years — before it arrived. French airstrikes had preceded the ground operation and French troops met no resistance, said Colonel Burkhard. The militants who had been controlling the city appeared to have fled northward.
“I could not have asked for anything more,” he said. “But now, it is time to fix things, to rebuild our lives and our city.” French and Malian forces have begun to take control of the city, he said, but there are concerns that fighters remain hidden among the civilian population.
The French are also expected to move on to another large town, Kidal, with the notion of clearing the fighters from population centers and garrisoning them with allied African troops before the rainy season begins in March. “I will indeed refrain from saying, today, that there’s no one left in Timbuktu,” Colonel Burkhard said.
The Pentagon said over the weekend that the United States would provide aerial refueling for French warplanes and that it would transport troops from African nations, including Chad and Togo. The American military has already begun transporting a 600-member French mechanized battalion to Mali and is providing intelligence information, including satellite imagery. To the east, the city of Gao is now under the full control of French and African troops, he said, with a contingent of 450 Malian soldiers joined by 40 soldiers from Niger and 40 from Chad. French special forces killed about 15 fighters in what were described as brief but intense firefights when they arrived just south of the city late Friday night, and perhaps 10 more militants on Sunday night on the city’s outskirts.
The French Defense Ministry spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard, said Sunday on Europe 1 radio that troops from Mali, Nigeria and Chad entered Gao after French special forces took the city’s airport and a strategic bridge on Saturday. French aircraft were not responsible for aerial strikes reported in recent days in the northern city of Kidal, Colonel Burkhard said. In a statement, the secular Tuareg nationalist rebel group that started the conflict in January 2012, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, claimed that it was in control of Kidal. The group was quickly overtaken in its fight to control northern Mali by Islamist groups linked to Al Qaeda.
“The taking of control of Gao, which has between 50,000 and 60,000 inhabitants, by Malian, Chadian and Nigerian soldiers is under way,” Colonel Burkhard said. At least one American refueling aircraft was involved in a mission with French forces on Sunday night, Colonel Burkhard said.
Despite the northward advance of Malian and French troops, residents of northern towns continued to pour southward, seeking safety from fleeing Islamist militants and French airstrikes. France has two objectives in Mali, Mr. Le Drian said — to halt a militant advance toward the south and to seize control of population centers in the north — and both have been achieved. “The mission has been fulfilled,” he said.
Adiarratou Sanogo, a 30-year-old teacher from Niafounké, stepped off a ferry that arrived in the riverside town of Mopti on Sunday morning, having floated down the Niger River for two days to reach safety. “We were afraid of the bombs,” Ms. Sanogo said. French officials speak regularly of an additional objective: restoring Mali’s “territorial integrity,” but no one has concluded that the goal has been reached.
As a schoolteacher she was used to a certain amount of respect, but the Islamist militants who took control of her town demanded that she cover her hair. One afternoon they came upon her talking with her brothers outside her front door, her neatly braided hair brazenly showing.

Lydia Polgreen reported from Segou, Mali, and Scott Sayare from Paris. Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Paris, Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington, and Alan Cowell from London.

“They shook a stick at me and said I must cover up or they would beat me,” she said. “I ran inside to find a scarf.”
For many residents of towns under Islamist control, it was the little things about their previous lives that they missed most.
“No smoking, no music, no girlfriends,” said Amadou Kané, a 26-year-old history student from Niafounké. “We couldn’t do anything fun.”
The prohibition of music was particularly tough on Niafounké, Mr. Kané said, because it was home to one of Mali’s most celebrated blues musicians, Ali Farka Touré.
“After praying in the mosque, it was our habit to play a little music,” Mr. Kané said. “They took that away from us.”

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Paris, Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington, and Alan Cowell from London.