Malian Tuareg rebels abandoned a remote border town they were besieging and crossed into Algeria after the army sent in heavy reinforcements to dislodge them, a Malian Defence Ministry source said on Thursday.Soldiers loyal to Tuareg dissident Ibrahima Bahanga besieged the remote garrison town of Tin-Zaouatene on the Algerian border in mid-September but Mali's army launched a counter-offensive and said on Wednesday they had regained control of the area. "They fled towards Tinza in Algeria. They had no other choice," a Defence Ministry source who declined to be named told Reuters. Tinza is used as an abbreviated form for Mali's Tin-Zaouatene as well as an adjoining settlement on the Algerian side of the border, on a trading route deep in the Sahara. "For a start the army went in where they weren't expecting, and then the fire power deployed was so great they didn't have any choice by to flee or be killed," the source said.
"Curly toed slippers, don't fail me now!"
A Malian Defence Ministry statement broadcast on state media late on Wednesday said government forces had regained control of the entire area of Tin-Zaouatene and was starting to remove land mines planted in the area during the conflict. The governor of the northern region of Kidal, Alhamdou Ag Ilyenne, said in a separate statement that the rebels had released a national guardsman, one of several dozen soldiers and civilians who have been taken hostage by Bahanga's men in the past few weeks. The group released seven others last Friday.
Bahanga launched his insurgency in Mali's Saharan north last month, laying land mines and using other tactics favoured by a Tuareg-led rebellion in neighbouring Niger that has killed more than 40 government soldiers since February in the uranium-mining north. The two insurgencies have not declared any links, but security officials say they may be cooperating.