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In an indication that French forces are making some progress in their battle against Islamist rebels, Jean-Yves Le Drian, France's defense minister, said in the statement that many of the vehicles used by the rebels as well as their logistics bases had been destroyed in the fighting. The statement provided no other information, and there was no immediate word on casualties.

French officials have been wary of disclosing the precise movements of their 2,500 troops on the ground in Mali, and on Friday a French military spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard, declined to confirm or deny that Malian or French forces had taken Hombori, where two Frenchmen were kidnapped in 2011. But he said that French aerial strikes were continuing against militants farther north.

Residents of Hombori, however, told news agencies that they had seen French and Malian soldiers in the town, which is 155 miles southwest of Gao, one of the three large cities in northern Mali that had been under militant control.

The military maneuvers came as human rights investigators continued to uncover evidence of executions by the Malian Army, whose record of abandoning the field of battle and committing atrocities has raised serious questions about its fitness to fight alongside French and other international troops headed here to fight the rebels in the North.

Gaëtan Mootoo, an investigator with Amnesty International, said witnesses had given him credible testimony that the army had killed two men near the city of Niono on Jan. 18, well after the French intervention had begun.

According to Mr. Mootoo, the soldiers asked one of the men, Aboubakrim Ag Mohamed, if they could search his house. When he complied and they found nothing suspicious, they asked him to step outside. A few blocks from his house, he was shot and killed, the witness said.

Mr. Mohamed's cousin, Samba Ag Ibrahim, was executed nearby, Mr. Mootoo said, when he encountered the same soldiers. The two bodies were abandoned, and villagers buried them the next day, he said.

More people have been killed in Sévaré, said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch. At least 11 bodies were tossed into a well in a suburb. The city is a garrison town, home to a huge contingent of Malian soldiers, raising the question of how so many could have been killed under their noses.

"Sévaré is a heavily militarized place," Ms. Dufka said. "It is highly likely the security forces were involved."

The problem of reprisals of perceived supporters of the rebel groups is only likely to get worse as the military offensive moves northward, where Islamist groups have spent months occupying towns. Such reprisals could have an ethnic dimension, focusing on Tuaregs, Arabs and other groups seen as sympathetic to the Islamic rebels.

"There is a rule-of-law vacuum, which was created by the departure from northern Mali by the institutions mandated to protect the civilian population," Ms. Dufka said. "Given the high level of ethnic tension, the risk for reprisals is extremely high, which is why nipping this in the bud is paramount."