By LYDIA POLGREEN and SCOTT SAYARE
TIMBUKTU, Mali — The streets were largely empty here late Wednesday except for the husks of burned-out vehicles and a small group of jumpy Malian soldiers manning a military checkpoint, one of whom accidentally fired his weapon into the ground as he checked documents.
The Islamist militants who had held this fabled city for nearly a year were chased away by the continuing French military offensive, but they left behind signs, in English and French, declaring Timbuktu an Islamic enclave that enforced Shariah law.
To the northeast, in Kidal, the last major stronghold held by the militants, French troops seized control of the airport, but a sandstorm prevented them from moving farther into the city, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian of France told members of Parliament in Paris on Wednesday.
Additional troops were later airlifted in, and African support troops also arrived from the south, Col. Thierry Burkhard, a French military spokesman, said. As was the case in the seizure of Timbuktu, French soldiers met no resistance in Kidal, Colonel Burkhard said. The militants who had occupied the city pulled back into the mountainous regions of Mali’s far north, near the Algerian border, Mr. Le Drian said at a news conference.
Tuareg fighters from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, or M.N.L.A., a secular militant group calling for independence for northern Mali, claimed Tuesday that they were in control of Kidal. The Tuaregs of the M.N.L.A. joined with Islamist fighters to seize the north last year, but have since broken with them and have indicated a willingness to fight against them alongside the French.
They remain opposed, however, to the presence in northern Mali of Malian forces, commanded from Bamako. The arrival of French forces in Kidal — along with reports of pillaging and attacks against Arab residents of Gao and Timbuktu after the French had freed the cities from rebel control — raised the specter of an explosion of ethnic tensions in the country.
Given those concerns, Malian soldiers will not be tasked with taking control of Kidal, at least not to begin with, French officials said. Chadian soldiers are on their way to the city from Niamey, the capital of neighboring Niger, Colonel Burkhard said. France has insisted that African forces will take control of military operations in Mali once the major population centers of the north have been taken back, as is now the case.
France called upon the Malian authorities in Bamako to open “discussions” with groups in the country’s north, including “nonterrorist armed groups that recognize the integrity of Mali,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Philippe Lalliot, said Wednesday. Colonel Burkhard, the military spokesman, called upon Tuareg separatists to set aside their demands for independence.
“Now the Tuaregs need to find a solution other than the holdup they want to do,” he said.
Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, flew to Algiers on Thursday for talks with Algerian leaders that endorsed what he described as a new “security partnership” between the two governments in the wake of the hostage-taking and bloodshed at the gas field at In Amenas by militants protesting the French intervention in Mali.
Officials said the trip reflected the new priority Mr. Cameron had given to forging ties across North Africa — and with other Western governments — in a bid to counter the threat of Qaeda-linked groups between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans.
Lydia Polgreen reported from Timbuktu, and Scott Sayare from Paris. John F. Burns and Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.
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