Mali's main Tuareg separatist group said Wednesday it supported the holding of a nationwide presidential poll in July but ruled out allowing the army in its northern bastion of Kidal for the vote. A delegation from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) held talks in Ouagadougou, the capital of neighbouring Burkina Faso, with the region's lead mediator in the Malian crisis, Djibrill Bassole.

A senior Mali army officer accused France Saturday of picking favourites among the country's warring militias after its troops attacked Arab rebels who had captured a village from armed Tuaregs. The intervention came on Friday after the Arab Movement of Azawad (MAA) took the northern desert settlement of Anefis from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a Malian and another African military source said. But the Malian source, a senior member of the war-torn west African nation's army, described the French intervention as "a bit of a mess".

Tuareg separatist rebels who held a chunk of Mali's vast north and still occupy the key town of Kidal are ready for talks to end the west African country's crisis, President Dioncounda Traore said Friday. Traore, who met French counterpart Francois Hollande at the Elysee presidential palace, also pledged that elections would be held on July 28 to replace his interim government. The Malian leader "repeated that the elections will be held on the scheduled date and that is our position as well," Hollande told journalists.

Suicide bombers targeted troops in two towns in war-torn northern Mali on Friday, leaving five of the attackers dead and two Malian soldiers wounded, military sources said. The first attack was against soldiers from neighbouring Niger stationed in Menaka, a Saharan desert commune 300 kilometres (185 miles) east of Gao, with only the bomber being killed, Nigerien and Malian military sources on the ground told AFP.