BAMAKO, May 23, 2008 (Reuters) - Mali's army launched an offensive on Friday against Tuareg rebels who had attacked a northeastern garrison, officials said, and in neighbouring Niger the military said it killed 11 of the nomadic desert insurgents.
The governments of the West African states whose territories jut into the southern Sahara are struggling to contain separate rebellions by nomadic Tuareg fighters who have been raiding army camps and ambushing convoys in the vast expanses of the desert.
Malian defence ministry officials said government forces were hunting the heavily armed rebel raiders who killed 15 soldiers in an attack this week on the garrison at Abeibara, 150 km (90 miles) from the Saharan trading town of Kidal.
The army said 17 of its soldiers were killed in what was one of the bloodiest clashes to date in the latest insurgency by the Malian Tuaregs, who also rose in revolt in the 1990s against the central government over 1,000 km (600 miles) away in Bamako.
Since last year, the fiercely independent Tuaregs in Niger and Mali have taken up arms again, driven by resentment over unresolved grievances and against what they see as interference in their territories by government armies and foreign companies.
The Malian army said it would strike back in response to the rebel raid on Abeibara.
"We're not going to wait to be attacked again before we reply. These bandits can't be allowed to just strike wherever they want. From now on, it's an all-out offensive," a senior Malian military official, who asked not to be named, said.
Malian army sources said around 20 soldiers, including two captains, were missing, feared captured in the rebel attack.
In neighbouring uranium-exporter Niger, where a Tuareg-led revolt has killed more than 70 government soldiers over the last year, President Mamadou Tandja extended for three more months a state of alert in the uranium-producing northern Agadez region.
Niger's defence ministry said on Friday government soldiers killed 11 insurgents in an attack on their base in a mountainous part of the Agadez zone. It added troops recovered large quantities of arms, munitions and anti-tank mines.
There was no immediate response to the defence ministry statement from the Tuareg-led rebel Niger Justice Movement (MNJ), which usually gives casualty reports that conflict with those of the government. No independent confirmation of the army attack against the rebel stronghold was available.
Both the Malian and the Niger Tuareg insurgents are holding prisoners, most of them government soldiers.
Niger's MNJ last week seized the vice chairman of the country's state-run national human rights commission, El Hadj Ahamadou Ahalawey, who is also a member of parliament.
In a posting on its website,
Mouvement des Nigeriens pour la Justice, the insurgent group accused Ahalawey of being involved in purchasing arms on behalf of the government and its army.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called on Friday for the immediate and unconditional release of the Niger human rights official.
"Ambushes, armed raids, kidnappings, killings, mining of roads, hostage taking and other violent acts have been relatively common events (since last year)," U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a news briefing in Geneva.
The governments of Mali and Niger, whose armies have received U.S. counter-insurgency training as part of a U.S.-declared war on terrorism, are reluctant to grant political legitimacy to Tuareg rebels and dismiss them as bandits and traffickers in arms and drugs.