The US and Europe backed the UN-mandated Mali operation as a counterstrike against the threat of radical Islamist jihadists.
French and Malian forces fighting Islamist rebels took control on Saturday of the rebel bastion of Gao, the biggest military success so far in an offensive against alleged al Qaeda-allied insurgents occupying the country's north.
The US and Europe backed the UN-mandated Mali operation as a counterstrike against the threat of radical Islamist jihadists using the West African state's inhospitable Sahara desert as a launching pad for international attacks.
French special forces seized the town's airport and a key bridge over the River Niger, killing an estimated dozen Islamist fighters without suffering any losses or injuries, the French army said. "The Malian army and the French control Gao today," Malian army spokesman Lieutenant Diaran Kone said.
In their overnight advance on Gao involving special force troops backed by warplanes and helicopter gunships, the French killed an estimated dozen Islamist fighters without suffering any losses or injuries, the French army said.
The speed of the French action in a two-week-old campaign suggested French and Malian government troops intended to drive aggressively into the north of Mali in the next few days against other Islamist rebel strongholds, such as Timbuktu and Kidal.
There have been 30 French air strikes on militant targets around Gao and Timbuktu in the past 36 hours.
French army spokesman Colonel Thierry Burkhard said French forces were still coming under fire from rebels inside Gao. "At the moment, there are still contacts, some harassment operations by terrorist groups who are firing in the direction of the airport from residences or seeking to blend in with the population," Burkhard said. He said both the bridge and airport runway were undamaged.
In Paris, the French defence ministry said that Malian and French troop reinforcements were being brought up and that troops from Chad and Niger, who have experience in desert warfare, would also be flown in shortly to Gao.
Earlier, on Friday, the Islamists blew up a road bridge on the main road south from Gao to Niger, but military officials from Niger said the Chadian and Nigerien forces could still reach Gao by other routes when they advanced. U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to French President Francois Hollande by phone on Friday and expressed support for France's military operation in Mali. At a conference of donors for the Mali operation to be held in Addis Ababa on Jan. 29, the AU is expected to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in logistical support and funding to assist the deployment of the African intervention force.
(Additional reporting by James Regan in Paris, Richard Valdmanis in Konna, Mali, Richard Lough and Aaron Maasho in Addis Ababa and David Lewis and Pascal Fletcher in Dakar; Writing by Pascal Fletcher)
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