FRENCH-LED troops have seized the airport and a key bridge serving the Islamist stronghold of Gao in a major boost to a 16-day-old offensive to rout al-Qaeda-linked rebels from Mali's sprawling desert north.
The stunning advance came as the extremist Muslim group controlling Gao since June said it was ready for talks to free a 61-year-old French hostage kidnapped in November.
In a parallel movement, Chadian troops deployed in Mali's eastern neighbour Niger started rolling towards the border to join a contingent of Niger soldiers as part of African efforts to boost the French-led offensive.
"They are a very big contingent and they have tanks and four-wheel drives with machineguns," a Niger security source said.
It was not clear whether they were set to cross the border, which lies only 100km from Gao.
France on Saturday confirmed the capture of the airport and the Wanbary bridge at Gao but said fighting was continuing in Gao itself.
The airport is located about 6km east of Gao, while the bridge lies at the southern entrance to the town, held by the al-Qaeda-linked Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).
Sources said earlier that the Islamists had left Gao in the wake of the French-led military offensive on January 11 to stop a triad of al-Qaeda-linked groups from pushing southward from their northern bastions towards Bamako.
An alliance of Tuareg rebels who wanted to declare an independent homeland in the north and hardline Islamist groups seized the northern towns of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal in April last year.
The Islamist groups include MUJAO, Ansar Dine, a homegrown Islamist group, and al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, of which MUJAO is an offshoot.
The Islamists then sidelined the Tuaregs to implement their own Islamic agenda. Their harsh interpretation of sharia law has seen transgressors flogged, stoned and executed, and they have forbidden music and television and forced women to wear veils.
The MUJAO said it was ready for negotiations to release Gilberto Rodriguez Leal, a French national of Portuguese origin who was kidnapped in western Mali.
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