BAMAKO, Sept 18, (AFP): Mauritania threw combat aircraft Saturday into a battle in northern Mali against militants loyal to al-Qaeda, an Algerian security source said amid reports that its troops had suffered a setback.
“The Mauritanians have engaged at least two combat aircraft with the aim of gaining the upper hand, which they have not had so far,” the source said.
A local resident, Hamine Ould Mohamed Aly, told AFP that he had seen two planes fly over near the scene of the fighting at Raz-El-Ma, 235 kms (150 miles) west of Timbuktu in northern Mali.
Speaking by satellite telephone, he also said he had seen six burned out Mauritanian army vehicles beside a well.
Earlier a senior Mauritanian officer said, “Our army has killed 12 armed terrorists and wounded dozens” in the cross-border fighting that began Friday with militants of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
“We have five dead in our own ranks and nine wounded, most of them lightly,” he added.
An Algerian security official in the region spoke however of “very many casualties” on the Mauritanian side, including “at least 15” killed.
“The Islamists lost at least five people and others were wounded,” the Algerian official said, adding they had captured five or more Mauritanian vehicles.
A local representative in northern Mali also told AFP that nomadic tribesmen in the region reported “many” Mauritanian soldiers dead. He speculated that AQIM had drawn Mauritania into a trap.
France meanwhile denied the raid was linked to Thursday’s abductions of seven foreign uranium workers in northern Niger, who were reported later by security sources to have been taken across the border to northern Mali.

“There are no French forces in the field,” a foreign ministry spokesman in Paris said, adding that the fighting was “independent” of the kidnapping.
A joint offensive by French and Mauritanian troops in the region two months ago was aimed at freeing a French hostage seized in Niger.
That raid killed seven AQIM members but failed to free hostage Michel Germaneau, and three days later the militant group said it had executed the 78-year-old in retaliation.
On Thursday gunmen seized an employee of the French nuclear group Areva and his wife, both French, and five others, including a Togolese and a Madagascan, from Satom, a subsidiary of construction giant Vinci.
The audacious and apparently well-prepared pre-dawn operation snatched the victims from their homes near Areva’s uranium mine at Arlit, 800 kms northeast of Niger’s capital Niamey.
The French foreign ministry said it had received no claim or ransom demand and could not be definitive about the kidnappers, despite concerns that they might be linked to AQIM.
A Mauritanian military source also said French forces were not directly involved in Saturday’s offensive, but locals in the Kidal region, 1,600 kms northeast of Bamako, said they had seen a French reconnaissance aircraft overflying the area.
“It’s true that allies, especially the French, have given us valuable information for the operation but they are not at our side,” the Mauritanian source told AFP.

Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure told Radio France Internationale that his country’s troops were staying out of the fighting, and he could not confirm if the Areva captives were in Mali.
Bamako allowed all neighbouring countries to engage in hot pursuit operations into Mali, he said, calling for global action to defeat terrorism, “which feeds on under-development.”
French nationals working for French firms in the north of Niger have been evacuated to Niamey or repatriated to France.
About half a dozen Areva employees arrived Saturday morning at Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris, following some 14 workers the day before, company spokeswoman Anne Fauconnier said.
The French nuclear firm has worked in Niger for 40 years and employs some 2,500 people, including until Friday about 50 expatriates.
The Areva group hopes to have another giant uranium mine in the north of the country, at Imouraren, working by the end of 2013.