"France has opened the gates of hell for all the French." Actually, Obama has, by enabling the growth of this Islamic supremacist movement in Mali. They're using weapons they got from the Libya jihadists, who were supplied by...the U.S.
Mali Islamists counter attack, promise France long war Reuters January 14 (thanks to Vijay)
BAMAKO/PARIS (Reuters) - Al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels launched a counteroffensive in Mali on Monday after four days of French air strikes on their northern strongholds, seizing the central town of Diabaly and promising to drag France into a brutal Afghanistan-style war.
France, which has poured hundreds of troops into the capital Bamako in recent days, carried out more air raids on Monday in the vast desert area seized last year by an Islamist alliance grouping al Qaeda's north African wing AQIM alongside Mali's home-grown MUJWA and Ansar Dine militant groups.
"France has opened the gates of hell for all the French," a spokesman for MUJWA, Oumar Ould Hamaha, told Europe 1 radio. "She has fallen into a trap which is much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia."
Paris is determined to shatter Islamist domination of northern Mali, which many fear could become a launchpad for terrorism attacks on the West and a base for coordination with al Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.
MUJWA, which has imposed strict sharia law in its northern fiefdom of Gao, promised France would pay for air strikes on the city. Dozens of its fighters died on Sunday when rockets hit a fuel depot and a customs house being used as a headquarters.
Launching a counter-attack far to the southwest of recent fighting, Islamists dislodged government forces from the town of Diabaly, just 350 km (220 miles) northeast of Bamako. French and Malian troops attempting to retake the town were battling Islamists shouting 'Allahu akbar', residents said.
The rebels infiltrated the town overnight from the porous border region with Mauritania, home to AQIM camps housing well-equipped and trained foreign fighters.
France, which has repeatedly said it has abandoned its role as the policeman of its former African colonies, convened a U.N. Security Council meeting for Monday to discuss the Mali crisis....
