BAMAKO: President Francois Hollande received a rapturous welcome in Mali on Saturday as he promised that France would stay as long as necessary to continue the fight against Islamist rebels in the country's north.
As troops worked to secure Kidal, the last bastion of radicals who occupied the vast desert north for 10 months before the French army's surprise intervention, Hollande told Malians it was time for Africans to take the lead but that France would not abandon them.
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