Close to the banks of the Niger river, men in the north Malian city of Gao gather at nightfall to drink beer, in one of the daily signs of life in a town whose residents are working to wipe out all traces of hardline Islamist occupation. With its walls of red clay, its white chairs and its tepid French export beer, Le Petit Dogon bar reopened last week after nine months of closure enforced by the armed Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), whose fundamentalists were driven out by French-led troops this year.

As night falls on "Sharia Square" in Gao in northern Mali, a score of youths are practising on a basketball court, closely watched by their coach. Now that armed extremists have left, several girls in shiny tracksuit bottoms and low-necked tops have joined the boys. Oumar Tonko Cisse, a retired coach in his 60s, is the founder of the Centre for Training and Promoting Sports (CFPS) in Gao. He is also president of the centre and its trainer, he says with a laugh.

Malian soldiers on Friday fired rocket-propelled grenades at the town hall in Gao, where armed Islamist forces had been holed up the previous day during heavy fighting, an AFP journalist reported. It was not immediately possible to determine whether Islamists were still active inside the building in the northern town. A Malian soldier earlier said "many" bodies of dead fighters wore explosives belts, both in the town hall and the nearby court house. He added that mines had been laid in the area.

PARIS, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Malian troops backed by French soldiers and attack helicopters killed 15 Islamists in Gao on Thursday in fighting to retake a mayor's office occupied by the militants, France's Defence Ministry said on Friday. Four Malian and two French soldiers were wounded in the fighting that erupted after Islamists were reported to have infiltrated the town in northern Mali. Calm had returned in the afternoon, the ministry said on its website. (Reporting By Nicholas Vinocur; Editing by Janet Lawrence)