KONNA, Mali — French special forces took control of the airport in the Islamic rebel stronghold of Gao, the French government said Saturday, meeting “serious resistance” from militants even as they pressed northward.
Gao is one of three main northern cities in Mali that has been under rebel control for months, and the capture of the main strategic points in Gao represents the biggest prize yet in the battle to retake the northern half of the country.
French airstrikes have been pounding the city since France joined the fight at Mali’s request on Jan. 11. French troops also took control of a bridge over the Niger River on Saturday, and the capture of the airport allowed a company of French soldiers to be airlifted in on Saturday afternoon, according to Col. Thierry Burkhard, the French military spokesman.
Another French company was on the road to Gao from Sévaré on Saturday night, and Malian and other African forces had begun to arrive, he said.
He stepped back from an earlier statement by the French Defense Ministry that declared the city freed by French forces, acknowledging that the statement was “a bit overdone.” Noting Gao’s 70,000 inhabitants, he added, “it’s not with a detachment of special forces that you take over a city.”
But with reinforcements streaming in, the battle for Gao appeared imminent.
Soldiers from Chad and Niger are expected to arrive soon, the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said in a statement. They will be part of a contingent of 1,900 African troops who have already arrived in Mali, fighting alongside the 2,500 French soldiers deployed here.
Gao’s mayor, who had fled to Bamako, the capital, returned to his city on Saturday, Mr. Le Drian said.
In Washington, the Pentagon said Saturday that the United States would provide aerial refueling for French warplanes. The decision increases American involvement, which until now had consisted of transporting French troops and equipment and also providing intelligence, including satellite photographs.
Gao, 600 miles northeast of the capital, had been under the control of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a splinter group of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Al Jazeera broadcast a statement from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in which the group said it had withdrawn temporarily from some cities it held, but would return with greater force.
Little information has come from the other two main cities under rebel control — Timbuktu, the fabled desert oasis, and Kidal, northeast of Gao — for the past 10 days because mobile phone networks have been down.
Konna was overrun by Islamic fighters on Jan. 10, prompting France to intervene, and a clearer picture has begun to emerge of the fighting. Residents and officials here said that at least 11 civilians had been killed in French airstrikes.
Charred husks of pickup trucks lined the road into the town, and broken tanks and guns littered the fish market, where the rebels appeared to have set up a temporary base.
France’s sudden entry into the fray has left the United Nations and Ecowas, the regional trade bloc, scrambling to put together an African-led intervention force that had been in the planning stages. The Mali Army, which has struggled to fight the Islamist groups, has been accused of serious human rights violations.
From Konna, it is easy to see why the Malian government pleaded for French help after the Islamist fighters took control of the town. Just 35 miles of asphalt separate Konna from the garrison town of Sévaré, home to the second-biggest airfield in Mali and a vital strategic point for any foreign intervention force.
Residents said their town fell to the rebels when 300 pickup trucks of fighters, bristling with machine guns, rolled in and pushed back the Malian Army troops who had been guarding the town after a fierce battle.
