'Suicide bomber' attacks Mali troops

A SUICIDE bomber has blown himself up near a group of Malian soldiers in the northern city of Gao, a local military officer says.

The suicide bomber "approached us on a motorbike, he was a Tamashek (Tuareg), and as he came closer he set off his belt," said Mali First Sergeant Mamadou Keita.

"He died immediately and among us, one was injured."

The act marked the first suicide attack in the embattled west African country since the start of a French-led offensive to oust the Islamists from Mali's north, where they had controlled key towns for 10 months.

It comes a day after one of the militant groups, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), said in a message on Thursday that it had "created a new combat zone" by organising attacks on military convoys and placing landmines.

A landmine blast on Wednesday between the northern towns of Douentza and Gao killed four civilians returning from market, an officer with Mali's paramilitary police said.

That explosion came after a similar blast in the same area on January 31 claimed the lives of two Malian soldiers.

"MUJAO is behind the explosion of two Malian army cars," the group's spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui said in a text message to Agence France-Presse.

A month after the French launched a lightning offensive to chase out the rebels, Paris has warned of "residual jihadist groups" who were still fighting.

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