In the fourth day of the French military intervention in Mali, Islamists counterattacked, seizing the town of Diabaly, 250 miles north of Bamako. The fighters had come from an area near the Mauritanian border. Abou Dardar, a leader of MUJAO, one of the Islamist groups in Mali, vowed to “strike at the heart of France …. Everywhere. In Bamako, in Africa and in Europe.” The Tuareg MNLA said it was ready to join the French-Malian offensive against the Islamists.
