Mali Sends in Troops to Retake Rebel Stronghold

Mali sent troops on Monday to retake the rebel stronghold of Kidal after Tuareg separatists seized local government offices, taking hostages and engaging the army in a firefight in which dozens were killed.

Eight soldiers and 28 insurgents died in fighting Saturday outside the regional governor's offices while around 30 civil servants were being held hostage by the militants, the government said.

"We have taken every measure necessary to reinforce our presence in the north," a Malian army source told AFP, declining to go into detail on the size of the deployment.

He said soldiers had been arriving since Saturday, while more were "on their way" from the city of Gao, a seven mile drive to the south-west, Anefis, a town between Gao and Kidal, and other locations.

Prime Minister Moussa Mara, who was in Kidal over the weekend as part of a first visit to the restive north since his appointment, said on Sunday that terrorists had "declared war on Mali".

"We will mobilize the resources to fight this war," Mara told AFP by telephone.

Former colonial power France demanded the "immediate and unconditional release" of the hostages, as did the United States, while Albert Koenders, the head of the United Nations' MINUSMA peacekeeping force in Mali, condemned the violence.

"We are staying in our home to be on the safe side. We don't know what's going to happen and we are frightened," a resident of Kidal told AFP.

The Malian government has blamed the clashes on Tuareg separatists but Mara said Islamist militants had taken advantage of the crisis "to participate in the chaos alongside other terrorist groups".

He said the government was working to get the hostages released but added that some had been "killed in cold blood" while others were freed as they had been wounded.

Mara said the governor's offices had been attacked by "jihadists, terrorists... with the clear aim to destroy and kill".

Malian troops "reacted accordingly. Today Malian armed forces are in Kidal, (they) are readying themselves for any contingencies," he said.

Mara was due to meet Islamic clerics on Monday, an aide said, to discuss "future field operations".

The premier was keen to underline that Mali was prosecuting a war against terrorists, not Muslims, the source said.

Kidal, 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, was the scene of anti-government protests by several hundred people on Friday and Saturday.

Sporadic gunfire was heard overnight but calm had returned by morning, a local government official told AFP.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is expected to raise the crisis in a televised address to the nation Monday.

Malian Defence Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga identified the rebels on Sunday as members of the Tuareg separatist National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), who he said were "supported by members of terrorist groups".

"Our forces have taken control of all government buildings except, for the moment, the governor's offices," he said.

"We are organizing as expected, all our resources are working as planned," Maiga, added on Monday, declining to give further details.

The MNLA said it was holding hostage the regional director of Kidal, a prefect, the governor's adviser and 24 soldiers, promising "humane treatment" to its captives.

Following a June peace deal that paved the way for presidential elections, the separatists evacuated the governor's offices in November last year after a nine-month occupation.

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 the desert town.

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 half.

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.

Foreign troops in Mali have come in for some criticism since Saturday, with Twitter users wondering under the #MINUSMerde hashtag why peacekeepers had seemed unable to repel the rebels.

"We demand that you leave Kidal. Your agenda is not that of Mali. We refuse the de facto partition of the country," a tweet identifying himself as an architect named Harouna Taore said.

At a protest in Gao, Mali's largest northern town, demonstrators in their hundreds chanted "down with MINUSMA" and "Free Kidal", witnesses told AFP.