Up to 700,000 people are expected to be uprooted by the violence in Mali, including 400,000 who could flee to neighbouring countries in the coming months, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.
"We believe there could be in the near future an additional 300,000 displaced inside Mali and up to 400,000 additional displaced (refugees) in neighbouring countries," UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a news briefing in Geneva.
Some 147,000 Malians have already fled to countries including Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Algeria since the crisis began last year, including 2,744 since French air strikes began a week ago, she said.
Malian refugees are giving "horrific accounts" of executions and amputations in the north, where children are recruited by rebels, the UNHCR told Reuters.
This as aid officials are warning about a lack of access to a Malian town that has been the scene of fierce fighting for a week between Islamist militants and French forces.
Doctors Without Borders says it's been trying to get to Konna since Monday but all roads leading to the community have been closed by the Malian military.
Malik Allaouna, director of operations, says it's essential that the organization be able to provide medical help.
The Malian military said Thursday that it had control of Konna, where Islamists first attacked a week ago. However, the claim could not immediately be confirmed and the town's fate remained unclear Friday.
The advance on Konna prompted French forces to intervene in Mali, where the Islamists had seized control of the north nine months ago.
The first West African regional forces arrived in Mali on Thursday to reinforce French and Malian troops battling to push back al Qaeda-linked rebels after seven days of French air strikes.
A contingent of around 100 Togolese troops landed in Bamako and was due to be joined by Nigerian forces already en route. Nigerien and Chadian forces were massing in Niger, Mali's neighbour to the east.
The scrambling of the U.N.-mandated African mission, which previously had not been due for deployment until September, will be a boon for France, the former colonial power in Mali.
French troops, which had moved northwards from Bamako in an armored column on Tuesday, pinned down some Islamist fighters in the small town of Diabaly. But French forces held back from launching an all-out assault as the insurgents had taken refuge in the homes of civilians, residents said.
"The Islamists are still in Diabaly. They are very many of them. Every time they hear a plane overhead, they run into homes, traumatising the people," said one woman who fled the town with her three children overnight.
Residents in the town of Konna, to the north of the central garrison town of Sevare, said Islamists had fled as Malian soldiers backed by French troops deployed.
AP/REUTERS