French-led troops in Mali on Monday controlled access to the city of Timbuktu after securing the airport of the fabled desert city as part of their push against Islamists, military officials in Paris and Bamako told AFP.
The troops encountered no resistance as they moved toward the city, one of the main bastions of the Islamist fighters who have controlled Mali's vast desert north for 10 months.
"We control the airport at Timbuktu," a senior officer with the Malian army told AFP. "We did not encounter any resistance."
In Paris, a military spokesman said the French-led troops now controlled access to the city as well as the territory between Timbuktu and Gao, the main city that had been under Islamist control.
Denmark plans to deploy about 100 special forces to Mali early next year to boost the elite anti-jihadist European task force Takuba headed by France, the government announced Thursday.
“The terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda remainssignificant,” the foreign and defence ministries said in a joint statement.
“They want to create a hub in West Africa for their extremist regime… and we cannot allow that to happen,” they added.
The Danish contingent, which apart from the special forces will also include top level military officers and surgeons, will be deployed at the beginning of 2022, the ministries said.
Copenhagen also plans to send a military transport plane to assist the UN mission in Mali, MINUSMA.
The French-led Takuba multinational force, launched in March 2020, has already seen Czech, Swedish and Estonian troops deployed in the region but France has struggled to obtain significant support from its larger EU partners.
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