GAO, Mali: Five people were killed in a remote Malian town on Friday in car bomb attacks by Islamists on Tuareg MNLA rebels with close links to French forces, a spokesman for the Tuareg fighters sai, reports Reuters.
Violence in northern Mali underscores the risk of French and African forces becoming entangled in a messy guerrilla war as they try to help Mali’s weak army counter bombings and raids by al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants.
Friday’s car bomb attacks in In Khalil, 1,700 km (1,000 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, came a day after a car bomb killed two people in the northern city of Kidal and French and Malian troops killed 15 Islamists on the streets of the city of Gao.
Sporadic gunfire was also heard in Gao on Friday, and a Malian officer said an Islamist fighter was still holed up near the banks of the Niger River
