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Jean-Yves Le Drian, the defense minister, hailed the advance on Monday as "a clear military success for the government in Bamako and for French forces intervening in support of these operations."

The developments in Diabaly, about 275 miles north of Bamako, and Douentza, on the eastern bank of the Niger River, some 300 miles to the north-east of the Malian capital, represented a reassertion of government control in areas where a lightning strike by Islamist forces last week prompted France to intervene, initially with air strikes to halt the rebel advance.

French soldiers in armored vehicles, part of what the military command in Paris has labeled Operation Serval, rolled through the town of Diabaly on Monday to cheers from residents, who flew French and Malian flags to welcome them.

"I want to thank the French people," said Mamadou Traoré, a Diabaly resident. He said French airstrikes had chased away the militants without harming any civilians, a claim echoed by other residents.

"None of us were touched," Mr. Traoré said. "It was incredible."

In Douentza, The Associated Press quoted a Malian official, Sali Maiga, as saying Islamist forces had already retreated from the settlement when French and Malian troops arrived on Monday.

After imposing an overnight curfew, "the Malian military and the French army spent their first night and the people are very happy," the official said Tuesday, and there had been no reports of incidents or gunfire.

The advances by government and French troops left them deployed along the main access routes to the desert redoubts of the Islamist fighters further north in settlements such as Timbuktu and Gao.

Islamist fighters overran Diabaly a week ago, the closest they have come to Bamako in an aggressive surge this month. Worried that there was little to stop them from rolling into the capital, where many French citizens live, France quickly stepped into the fight, striking the militants at the front lines and bombing their strongholds in the north.

Suddenly a long-simmering standoff with the Islamist groups holding the north had been transformed into a war involving French forces, precisely the kind of event the West hoped to avoid. American officials have long warned that Western involvement could stir anti-Western sentiment and provoke terrorist attacks, a fear that seemed to be realized when militants stormed a gas facility in Algeria last week, resulting in the deaths of at least 37 foreign hostages.

Even after French forces entered the fight in Mali, driving back the Islamists would prove more difficult than officials initially suggested. Rather than flee, many of the militants in Diabaly seemed to dig in, taking over homes and putting the civilian population in the cross-fire.

But they eventually fled on Friday morning, residents said, in the face of relentless French airstrikes.

The fighters had little time to impose the version of Shariah law that has made them infamous in the north, where they have carried out public whippings and amputations and stoned a couple to death. But their brief reign over Diabaly was a small taste of the harsh policies they have enacted elsewhere.

"I had to cover my head at all times," Djenaba Cissé said. "When I walked with my brother to the fields, they would bother us," she continued. "They would ask us questions to verify that we were siblings."

Few residents said they actually met the hardened men who had taken control of their village, but Kola Maiga, who lives at the edge of town, recalled their arrival on the morning of Jan. 14.