Somali witnesses said today that at least eight civilians were killed in the disastrous French operation to rescue a kidnapped secret agent but France's defence minister defended the decision to launch the raid.

Sources in lawless Somalia also suggested the reason Saturday's raid failed was that the Al Qaeda-linked Shebab group holding the hostage received advance warning.

"Four civilians, including three from one family, are among the dead. They were all killed outside Bulomarer, where the French commandos landed before entering the city," resident Adan Derow said by telephone.

The victims were a couple, their son and another man, other residents said.

"We don't know why those civilians were killed" outside Bulomarer, where the raid took place, added another resident, Ali Moalim Hassan.

"Four other civilians were also caught in the crossfire and died in the town of Bulomarer" during a pitched battle between French commandos and Islamist fighters.

Freshman Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) on Monday threatened to impeach President Barack Obama if he used an executive order to infringe American's Second Amendment rights.

"The White House's recent announcement they will use executive orders and executive actions to infringe on our constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms is an unconstitutional and unconscionable attack on the very founding principles of this republic," he said in a statement.

"I will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary, including but not limited to eliminating funding for implementation, defunding the White House, and even filing articles of impeachment."

During a press conference Monday morning, the President suggested he would use an executive order to reduce gun violence. Obama explained there were "some steps that we can take that don't require legislation and are within my authority as president."

Islamist forces based in northern Mali vowed Monday to avenge France's fierce military offensive against them on French soil.

"France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France," said a leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an offshoot of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Asked where they would strike, Abou Dardar told AFP by telephone: "Everywhere. In Bamako, in Africa and in Europe."

Authorities in France were already on high alert over fears of a backlash on home soil by Islamist extremists. The MUJAO official also referred to France's eight hostages held in the Sahel region.

Rebels have grabbed more territory in Mali, inching closer to the capital despite intensive aerial bombardments by French warplanes, French and Malian authorities have said.

The al-Qaeda-linked rebels overran the garrison village of Diabaly in central Mali, France's defence minister said in Paris on Monday.

Jean-Yves Le Drian said the rebels "took Diabaly after fierce fighting and resistance from the Malian army that couldn't hold them back"'.

The Malian military is in disarray and has let many towns fall with barely a shot fired since the insurgency began almost a year ago in the northwest African nation.

French military forces, who began battling in Mali on Friday, widened their aerial bombing campaign against the rebels occupying northern Mali, launching airstrikes for the first time in central Mali to combat the new threat.

The rebellion against the Malian government has its roots in the fall of Gaddafi.

Britain is to assist French military operations in Mali, Downing Street confirmed today. The help was agreed between the Prime Minister and President Hollande, and follows French intervention to support the Malian government's efforts to halt an advance by rebels.

A Downing Street spokesperson said:

The Prime Minister spoke to President Hollande this evening to discuss the deteriorating situation in Mali and how the UK can support French military assistance provided to the Malian Government to contain rebel and extremist groups in the north of the country.

The Prime Minister has agreed that the UK will provide logistical military assistance to help transport foreign troops and equipment quickly to Mali.

We will not be deploying any British personnel in a combat role. They also agreed that the peacekeeping mission from West African countries needs to be strongly supported by countries in the region and deployed as quickly as possible.

Both leaders agreed that the situation in Mali poses a real threat to international security given terrorist activity there.

The US military is weighing support for French forces in Mali including surveillance drones, a US official said Friday, as Washington backed moves to deny safe haven to extremists in the country.

US commanders were looking at providing intelligence and aerial refueling tankers among a range of options, such as logistical backup and boosting intelligence sharing, which would involve surveillance drones, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

Backed by French air power, Mali on Friday unleashed an offensive against Islamist rebels who have seized control of the north of the West African country and are now threatening to push south.

Senior US officials held talks with their counterparts in the French capital and other allies on drawing up an action plan, the official said.

If you've ever suspected politics is increasingly being run in the interests of big business, I have news: Jeffrey Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University, agrees with you - at least in respect of the United States.

In his book, The Price of Civilisation, he says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop. ''Corporate wealth translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between government and industry. Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,'' he says.

Sachs says four key sectors of US business exemplify this feedback loop and the takeover of political power in America by the ''corporatocracy''.

First is the well-known military-industrial complex. ''As [President] Eisenhower famously warned in his farewell address in January 1961, the linkage of the military and private industry created a political power so pervasive that America has been condemned to militarisation, useless wars and fiscal waste on a scale of many tens of trillions of dollars since then,'' he says.

Armed groups in Northern Mali vowed on Monday to strike "at the heart of France" to avenge a fierce military offensive against them.

"France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France," said a leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an offshoot of AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb).

Asked where they would attack, Abou Dardar told AFP by telephone, "Everywhere. In Bamako, in Africa and in Europe. "

Another MUJAO leader Omar Ould Hamaha, nicknamed "Redbeard", warned on radio Europe 1 that France had "opened the doors of hell" with its intervention and faced a situation "worse than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia".

France intervened in the country on Friday and has caused heavy losses in the extremists' ranks.

Preface: My entire purpose for writing this essay is to urge that decision-makers do what is best for our planet and not do something which will cause more harm than good. Environmentalists should check my background below before dismissing this out of hand.

When I pointed out a couple of days ago that a group of scientists and much of the popular press warned in the 1970s of an imminent ice age, I didn't realize they had such a prominent member.

Specifically, as New York Times science columnist John Tierney noted in September:

In 1971, long before Dr. Holdren came President Obama's science adviser, in an essay [titled] "Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide," Dr. Holdren and his co-author, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, warned of a coming ice age.

They certainly weren't the only scientists in the 1970s to warn of a coming ice age, but I can't think of any others who were so creative in their catastrophizing. Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich wrote:

The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.

India's army chief on Monday accused Pakistan of planning an attack in which two Indian soldiers were killed in the disputed Kashmir region last week, and warned of possible retaliation.

Gen. Bikram Singh's strong words are a clear message that India believes the Jan. 8 attack was a deliberate provocation and not an unintentional skirmish of the kind that often breaks out along the Line of Control, the de facto border between the two archrivals in the Himalayan territory.

Pakistan did not immediately respond to the comments, which are likely to raise tensions further.

The tit-for-tat fighting began Jan. 6 when Pakistan accused Indian troops of raiding an army post and killing a soldier. India denied attacking the post, and said its troops fired across the border in response to Pakistani shelling that destroyed a home on the Indian side.