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Alain Amontchi / Reuters
Malian soldiers escort prisoners, who are suspected al-Qaeda-allied fighters, in front of a military cell in Mopti, Monday.
Tuareg rebels in northern Mali said on Monday they had captured two senior Islamist insurgents fleeing French air strikes toward the Algerian border as France pressed ahead with its bombing campaign against al-Qaida's Saharan desert camps.
Pro-autonomy Tuareg MNLA rebels said one of their patrols seized Mohamed Moussa Ag Mohamed, an Islamist leader who imposed harsh Shariah (Islamic) in the desert town of Timbuktu, and Oumeini Ould Baba Akhmed, thought to be responsible for the kidnapping of a French hostage by al-Qaida splinter group MUJWA.
"We chased an Islamist convoy close to the frontier and arrested the two men the day before yesterday," Ibrahim Ag Assaleh, spokesman for the MNLA, told Reuters from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. "They have been questioned and sent to Kidal."
France has deployed nearly 4,000 ground troops, as well as warplanes and armored vehicles in its three-week-old operation to break Islamist militants' 10-month grip on northern towns and return the country to normal.
It is now due to gradually hand over to a U.N.-backed African force of some 8,000 troops, known as AFISMA, of which around 3,800 have already been deployed.
Paris and its international partners want to prevent the Islamists from using Mali's vast desert north as a base to launch attacks on neighboring African countries and the West.
After meeting French President Francois Hollande in Paris, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden praised the "decisiveness and incredible competence" of France's operations. He backed France's call for U.N. peacekeepers to be deployed in Mali.
The legendary Timbuktu has come back to life after the French drove Islamist extremists out. Many priceless manuscripts were  saved from being destroyed— some hidden or smuggled to safety. NBC's Rohit Kachroo reports.
"We agreed on the need to, as quickly as reasonably possible, establish an African-led mission to Mali and, as quickly as is prudent, transition that mission to the United Nations," Biden said, flanked by Hollande.
Paris believes that deploying U.N. peacekeepers to Mali could eliminate problems over funding the African mission and fears of ethnic reprisals by Malian troops against light-skinned Tuaregs and Arabs associated with the Islamists.
The MNLA, which seized control of northern Mali last year only to be pushed aside by better-armed Islamist groups, regained control of its northern stronghold of Kidal last week when Islamist fighters fled French air strikes into hideouts in the nearby desert and rugged Adrar des Ifoghas mountains.
The Tuareg group says it is willing to help the French-led mission by hunting down Islamists. It has offered to hold peace talks with the government in a bid to heal wounds between Mali's restive Saharan north and the black African-dominated south.
"Until there is a peace deal, we cannot hold national elections," Ag Assaleh said, referring to interim Malian President Dioncounda Traore's plan to hold polls on July 31.
Many in the southern capital Bamako -- including army leaders who blame the MNLA for executing some of their troops at the Saharan town of Aguelhoc last year -- strongly reject any talks.
"One of the first conditions for reconciliation is to disarm rebel groups," Malian Foreign Minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly told Reuters in Paris. "We must first liberate the north of Mali and then we can organize elections."
Related:
French troops enter last Islamist stronghold in northern Mali
French-led forces in Mali seal off Timbuktu; rebels torch ancient library
US to provide aerial refueling for French Mali effort
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
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Sounds like the French did not close the back door !!!!
Just let the rats slip out the back and everything will be ok. Sorry France , it doesn't work that way. Now you will have a longer war , with insurgents cumming at you from all sides. Guess you didn't learn from our mistakes . By the way don't try to appease the people there. As that doesn't work either. Have a nice war while your country goes broke paying for it.
Harsh shariah law should be imposed on them both! Death, then straight to hell.
GM Fed.
Good point.
Hey Chef! Top of the morning to ya!
So why are American muslim imams trying to push for sharia law here in the US? What ever happened to imam Rauf?
FedupwithFed: You posted what I was about to post!
It is simply waste of resources to hold the Islamists.
Just give Islamists back with interest what they give: death.
Next time, add pork meat on their dead bodies.
Have you ever tried to "close the back door" on a thousand miles of open desert? It's a little harder than you might think.
Northern Mali is smack in the middle of the Sahara Desert. That's why the Tuaregs are vital - it's their home. They know the roads, the oases, the dangers. They know how to find someone hiding there, and where to drive a fleeing enemy so they die of thirst. The French don't.
yeah
What do you think DRONES are good for ???
You make a good point. But there is more than one way to close that back door.
Drones aren't enough.
Again, I'm not sure people realize how BIG Mali is. Its northeastern desert regions (the area in question) cover 800,000 square kilometers - a bit larger than the combined area of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and both Carolinas.
Which is easier - to go to the expense of patrolling all that area with drones, or simply to get the people who live there already (and know all the little hideyholes, too, which drones would probably miss) to keep an eye out for you?
Now that they are captured question them & then execute them. It is the only way to make them stop abusing & murdering all who fall within their sphere of influence. Don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Leave no survivors.
including supporters!
So, the Tuareg rebels had taken the north, and executed some Mali soldiers. THEN, the Islamist come in and subjugate the Tuareg, and force Sharia on Timbuktu... Ok, got it, so far. The French get pissed and attack. Suddenly, the Tuareg are on the government's side. They (the French) quickly chase the Jihads back to Algeria, and the Tuareg claim victory. There's a few good books hidden in this story!
Who said anything about claiming victory? They're still hunting Islamists, and when they're finished they'll be patrolling their border for some time to make sure the Islamists don't return. And not only do they have to win an actual war, they have to win a political war in Bamako, too! They have to convince the people of Mali that they should be autonomous.
They're buckling down, not claiming victory.
On the plus side, the story of the Tuaregs is going to serve as a cautionary tale to any future African militia group that allying with Jihadis only harms you.
Caught fleeing? Impossible. These fearless fighters embrace death, Allah,and all that stuff. What am I missing? Are there really cowards cowering under the Al Qaeda umbrella?
You must be joking!
These Islamists are the biggest cowards: they use full force on minorities, females, unarmed people, and helpless.
If required hundreds will cheer from the sides!
Just look at the model for their Sharia Laws in Saudi Arabia!
If a pin falls in House of Saud with 5000 princes and princesses, they need US or NATO forces!
Detain, arrest, interrogate and execute. This is the same type of treatment this scourge on society gives anyone who is not of their beliefs and the same way they should be treated. No court needed once they have been interrogated, the only thing that should be left is to take them out behind the compound execute them leaving their carcasses rotting in the desert for the buzzards.
Kill or capture (preferably kill) these nut cases anywhere and everywhere you find them.
Start from Saudi Arabia and Paksitan, fountainheads of Islamic extremism.
The sooner civilized humanity realizes that islam is an evil spreading virus (muhammed being patient zero) and not a religion, the easier it will be for the non-infected to deal with it. A virus produces nothing but itself, kills at random without logic or remorse and leaves nothing but death, destruction and despair in its wake. Science has never cured a virus. All the non-infected can do is isolate the virus and pretty soon the virus will kill all of its hosts. (witness what is happening in the infected parts of the world) Pretty soon, no hosts.........no virus! allah be praised! I only hope that the infected keep up the good work. BTW, if you are infected and feel the need to spread your disease to another country, stay out of the USA, we are all stocked up on crazy here.
Back when Islam was holding the flame aloft for western civilization you could say the same for the Papists in Europe. Islam is not the danger, it is fundamentalism in any form. Humans who claim they have the one true set of answers are as dangerous as they come. Which is a reasonable argument against any religion I guess. The Crazy you mention stocked up here in the United States is also a symptom of a different strain of fundamentalism.
"Once you have placed a label on the box you have constructed from your beliefs, you cease to possess the ability to perceive beyond its constraints"
Seven you are incorrect.
Science has cured thousands of viruses, what they can not cure is a mutating virus such as the common cold.
SouthernGent, actually no viruses have ever been cured by science. Science has prevented some viruses from spreading through the discovery and implementation of vaccines. It was even thought that this procedure rid the planet of small pox but there have actually been a few cases in recent years. The vaccines created may be what you are referring to but it is by no means a cure.
Not trying to be argumentative.....just informative.
So one group of rebels captured leaders from rebel group. Hopefully the Mali and the Tuareg rebels can come to the age old conclusion that, "an enemy of my enemy is my friend," and hopefully work out their differences. The racial aspect of this is interesting, as in Libya and Sudan you have the light skinned repressing the dark and Mali, once the center of the African slave trade, you have a reversal of roles.
Muslims refer to any non-Muslim as a "Non-Believer". Kill the prisoners and do it before they make a break.
Congrats to the French for taking the necessary steps to bring life back to the African region and dispensing death and destruction to the initiators of HATE, DEATH and DESTRUCTION known as ISLAM and it's demented followers. It's to bad the region had to be subjected to this harsh nonsense (ISLAM) and lost valuable historic landmarks, good people unjustly butchered/killed under the name of Allah, and their culture put under abolishment based on beliefs of idiots. I would love to see ISLAM wiped off the face of the earth.
Lesson for the Tuaregs - you make a deal with the devil, he will make you regret it. Getting in bed with these islamists nearly cost them everything and it drove their country into brutality. Now they think that they can just offer up a few prisoners as a peace deal, and part of that deal is that they get to keep their conquered lands in the north? They invited this mess into Mali, now they have to pay for it.
Is Joe Biden preparing for 2016 Presidential elections?
He is trying to be smart more than his brain.
Why is there, always, ALWAYS a conspiracy of sore-losers like you out there who feel that their mission in life is to incessantly regurgitate their pitiful hatred on the rest of us for the disgrace of electing a non-Republican and God forbid, especially an undesirable Black man to the White House into every thread - even if it has nothing what-so-ever to do with what's being discussed?
You appear to be one of those FOX Channel bobble-headed "disciples" like my sister and her husband who salivates on every lie that comes out of the disgruntled pieholes of the propoganda merchants working for that infamous Channel. She is so blinded by FOX's Anti-Obama rhetoric that she inevitably is able to grasp some random statement in a movie or even infomercial as an excuse to say something negative about how evil Obama is including, naturally, that he coundn't win unless he cheated to win both elections - unlike the gerrymandering and covert election rigging that the R's use and STILL couldn't scrape up enough legitimate votes to elect one as President!
She just knows, because FOX said so, that he is using his un-Constitutional power and position to ruin the economy along Social and economic class lines far more aggressively than Reagan and Bush's "Trickle-Down" Policies managed to do, or now feeling threatened because they believe the FOX lie that he is aligning himself with our sworn enemies so they can eventually take over the Country and put us all in those Gulags that FEMA is building, or that he is actually a citizen of Kenya whose family planned the manipulation of the State of Hawaii's government and the National Media for 40 years so his fanmily could guarantee that he would be elected POTUS in 2008!
Because she is so deeply ingrained in that spoon-fed, calculated alternate universe dominated by the likes of the inbreds at FOX and what they snigger during their embarrassing long televised day to see any other facts out there, I can barely stomach going over there because I know it will be enduring hours of them glued to FOX and listening to them constantly bitching about the curse on America of Obama being elected President!
GIVE ME A BREAK!
Jonathan, he does happen to be the Vice President of the United States and you happen to be a complete pee on and worthless nobody, I can only imagine what an idiot you are compared to Joe Biden. Exactly what does your comment have to do with the seized Islamist leaders in Mali?
Hope they either hang these men or let them spend a long time in Prison.
Seems that France did a great job of running off those barbarians. Way to go Frenchies!!!
Isn't it interesting that when the Islamist terrorists start to lose ground, instead of standing and fighting, they run away and hide? Typical cowards who only want to maim, rape, extort and kill when they can remain unchallenged. Maybe the Mali cops can give them a good beating or two, cut off their hands and behead them before sending them to trial.