France wants to begin withdrawing its 4,000 soldiers from Mali from March
"Several hundred" Islamist militants have been killed since France
launched an offensive in Mali last month, the French defence minister
has said.
Jean-Yves Le Drian said they had been killed in airstrikes and direct combat with French troops, reports the BBC.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said that France may begin pulling out of Mali as early as March.
In a newspaper interview, he said that "if everything goes as planned, the number of troops should diminish".
France has an estimated 4,000 troops in Mali and officials from
multilateral institutions and dozens of countries have been meeting in
Brussels to discuss how to replace them.
The defence minister said the last major town in northern Mali to
remain in the hands of the rebels, Kidal, was now under French control.
Air attacks are continuing on suspected rebel hideouts north of the town.
The militants died in French airstrikes on vehicles carrying fighters
and materials, or in ground fighting in the town of Konna at the start
of the campaign and later in the town of Gao, Le Drian said.
He said French troops had inflicted "great damage on the jihadist
terrorist groups", saying "several hundred, a significant number" of
Islamist fighters had been killed.
To put that in context, at the outset of the offensive French experts
suggested that the Islamist alliance could probably muster about 3,000
fighters overall, says the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris.
France has suffered only one fatality so far - a helicopter pilot killed at the beginning of the operation.
Le Drian said Malian forces had also taken prisoners - "some"
high-ranking militants - whom he said would "have to answer to Malian
courts and international justice".
French forces continue to carry out airstrikes in mountains north of
Kidal where Islamists have taken refuge - and where some or all of seven
French hostages are being held, our correspondent reports.
Earlier, the French military said some 1,800 soldiers from Chad had
entered Kidal. Le Drian said the town was now under the control of
French forces with "the support of African and in particular Chadian
forces".
Meanwhile, pro-autonomy Tuareg rebels in Mali said they had occupied
the north-eastern town of Menaka, but their claim could not be verified.
Analysts say the rebels - who initially joined forces with the Islamist
rebels in their fight for an independent state in northern Mali, but
later fell out with them - are seeking to maximise their territorial
claim on the region ahead of talks.
The French intervened in Mali in January, fearing that al-Qaeda-linked
militants who had controlled Mali's vast north since April 2012 were
about to advance on the capital, Bamako.
In an interview to be published on Wednesday, Fabius said French soldiers could start leaving Mali in March.
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