© AP Photo/Michel EulerA French airman, center, talks to British military personnel prior to the take off a British C17 transport plane enroute to Mali at the French army base in Evreux, 90 kms(56 mls)north of Paris, Monday, Jan. 14, 2013.
French forces led an all-night aerial bombing campaign Tuesday to wrest control of a small Malian town from armed Islamist extremists, as more French troops arrived in preparation for a possible land assault.
A convoy of 40 to 50 trucks carrying French troops crossed into Mali from Ivory Coast. Several thousand soldiers from the nations neighboring Mali are also expected to begin arriving soon, and Nigeria said nearly 200 would be coming in the next 24 hours.
French President Francois Hollande launched an attack on Mali's rebels, who are linked to al-Qaida, last week after the insurgents began advancing south. France's action preempted a United Nations-approved plan for a military operation in Mali, which was expected to start about nine months from now. Hollande decided a military response could not wait that long in its former colony.
French officials have acknowledged that the rebels are better armed and prepared than they expected. Despite France's five-day-old aerial assault, the Islamist fighters have succeeded in gaining ground, most notably taking Diabaly on Monday, putting them roughly 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Mali's capital, Bamako. When the air raids began last week, the closest known point they occupied was 680 kilometers (420 miles) from the capital.