UN, European and African officials are due to meet in Brussels to discuss how to hold democratic elections in Mali in the summer.

They will also discuss the security and humanitarian situation in the wake of last year's coup and the current offensive against Islamist militants.

French and Malian forces are forcing back al-Qaeda-linked fighters who seized the vast north of the country.

The US and France want African troops to take over from French forces.

Meanwhile, French warplanes have been bombing rebel bases and depots in remote parts of northern Mali to try to cut off their supply routes.

Correspondents say the rapid progress of the French-led force has put the diplomatic focus on how to ensure lasting security in Mali.

"When a state falls apart, it takes a while to put it back together again. Nevertheless, we need to try," said one senior EU official quoted by Reuters.

"In the medium term, we need to look at ensuring the north has adequate funds for development so the communities there can build real livelihoods," the official added.

The international support group for Mali, meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, will discuss how to support a political process leading to elections that interim President Dioncounda Traore has said Mali hopes to hold on 31 July.

Tens of thousands of Malians have fled the fighting
It will also look at how to fund, equip and train an 8,000-strong African force expected to eventually take over from the French.

US Vice-President Joe Biden, speaking alongside French President Francois Hollande on Monday, said they had agreed African troops should take over "as quickly as reasonably possible".

The EU aims to send about 500 military trainers to Mali by the middle of this month.

Funding for humanitarian aid will also be debated. Aid agencies warn that food and fuel supplies to some parts of northern Mali are starting to dry up.

About 45 delegations are expected at the Brussels meeting including international lenders such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

EU foreign ministers have already agreed to resume sending aid to Mali gradually, having suspended it after last year's coup.

Separately in Strasbourg, MEPs will question President Hollande about the French military campaign.

Mali descended into chaos last March after a military coup created a power vacuum that enabled Tuareg rebels to seize two-thirds of the country.

Islamist extremists then hijacked the revolt.

The French launched their intervention on 11 January as Islamist militants threatened to march towards the capital, Bamako.

Since then, the militants have been driven from population centres in the north and east.

Kidal remains the only major town not under the control of French and Malian forces.

French troops are at the airport in Kidal but rebels from a Tuareg group who want their own homeland in northern Mali - the MNLA - still control the town itself.

TIMBUKTU, Mali - In a new phase of the Mali conflict, French airstrikes targeted the fuel depots and desert hideouts of Islamic extremists in northern Mali overnight Monday, as French forces planned to hand control of Timbuktu to the Malian army this week.

After taking control of the key cities of northern Mali, forcing the Islamic rebels to retreat into the desert, the French military intervention is turning away from the cities and targeting the fighters' remote outposts to prevent them from being used as Saharan launch pads for international terrorism.

The French plan to leave the city of Timbuktu on Thursday, Feb. 7, a spokeswoman for the armed forces in the city said Monday. French soldiers took the city last week after Islamic extremists withdrew. Now the French military said it intends to move out of Timbuktu in order to push farther northeast to the strategic city of Gao.

"The 600 soldiers currently based in Timbuktu will be heading toward Gao in order to pursue their mission," said Capt. Nadia, the spokeswoman, who only provided her first name in keeping with French military protocol. She said that the force in Timbuktu will be replaced by a small contingent of French soldiers, though she declined to say when they would arrive.

On Monday, French troops in armored personnel carriers were still patrolling Timbuktu. In the city's military camps, newly arrived Malian troops were cleaning their weapons Monday and holding meetings to prepare to take over the security of the city once the French leave.

There are signs that the Islamic rebels are beginning a guerrilla-type of conflict from their desert retreats as land mine explosions have killed four Malian soldiers and two civilians throughout the northern region in recent days.

The two civilians died in an explosion from a land mine, or an improvised explosive device, on the road in northeastern Mali that links Kidal, Anefis and North Darane, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement Monday.

Four soldiers were killed last week by a land mine explosion in the northeast area near Gossi. The French reported that two other land mines have been found in that vicinity, and early Monday they detonated one of the mines.

French airstrikes targeted the Islamic extremists' desert bases and fuel depots in northern Mali overnight.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on France-Inter radio Monday that the strikes hit the Kidal region, near the border with Algeria, for the second night in a row. The extremists "cannot stay there a long time unless they have ways to get new supplies," he said.

French Mirage and Rafale planes also pounded extremist training camps as well as arms and fuel depots from Saturday night into the early hours of Sunday, north of the town of Kidal and in the Tessalit region. France's Defense Ministry said Monday night that 25 depots and training centers had been targeted by fighter jets and attack helicopters.

The French intervened in Mali on Jan. 11 to stem the advance of the al-Qaida-linked fighters, who had taken over the country's north, enforced harsh rules on the population and plotted a terrorist attack in neighboring Algeria. The French troops arrived when the Islamic extremists threatened to move farther south.

After pushing extremists out of key northern cities, France is now pushing to hand over control of those sites to African forces from a United Nations-authorized force made up of thousands of troops from nearby countries.

"In the cities that we are holding we want to be quickly replaced by the African forces," Fabius said Monday.

Asked whether the French could pull out of the fabled city of Timbuktu and hand it to African forces as soon as Tuesday, Fabius responded, "Yes, it could happen very fast. We are working on it because our vocation is not to stay in the long term."

But it is far from clear that the African forces - much less the weak Malian army -are ready for the withdrawal of thousands of French troops, fighter planes and helicopters which would give the Africans full responsibility against the Islamic extremists, who may strike the cities from their desert hideouts.

In Paris, U. S. Vice President Joe Biden praised the French intervention in Mali while meeting with French President Francois Hollande.

"We applaud your decisiveness and, I might add, the capability of France's military forces," said Biden. "Your decisive action was not only in the interest of France but of the United States and everyone. We agreed on the need to, quickly as possible, establish an African-led mission to Mali and as quickly as prudent transition that mission to the UN."

Also in Paris, the Malian foreign minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly told The Associated Press that the Malian army will be fighting with French and African troops against the Islamic radicals.

"We must continue pushing them (the extremists) north and then over there, there is a real need for a strong military force, air force, to destroy all the implementations around the mountains," said Coulibaly. "So ultimately, the real objective is to destroy all terrorist presence in northern Mali."

The French have ramped up their troop level to nearly 4,000 - the number France once deployed in Afghanistan - and nearly 3,800 African soldiers were in Mali as of Monday, the French Defense Ministry said. Some 1,800 Chadian soldiers were holding the northern town of Kidal while French troops held the airport.

In northern Mali, the price of food and fuel is rocketing up as a result of the conflict, the international aid organization Oxfam warned Monday.

Many market traders of Arab or Tuareg descent fled the area when French troops pushed out the Islamic extremists last week and the traders have not returned for fear of reprisals, said Oxfam, in a statement.

"If traders do not come back soon and flows of food into northern Mali remain as limited as they are now, then it is likely that markets will not be properly stocked and prices will stay high - making it very difficult for people to get enough food to feed their families," said Philippe Conraud, Oxfam's country director in Mali.

"This phase of the war may almost be over, but the battle to build peace and stability has only just begun," said Conraud. "If people feel that their lives are at risk and that their families are not safe, they will not return to Mali. It's as simple as that."

(AP)

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Pirates hijacked a French-owned fuel tanker off Ivory Coast, abducting 17 sailors in the latest attack by criminal gangs targeting the ships to steal their valuable cargo, officials said Monday. Meanwhile, a sailor died in a similar attack Monday near Nigeria's largest city.

The M/T Gascogne had offloaded some of the diesel fuel in its hold before the attack Sunday off the coast of Abidjan, according to a statement by Ivory Coast's Transportation Ministry. Pirates overpowered the crew of the vessel, which included seven sailors from Togo, four from Benin, two from Ivory Coast, two from Senegal and one apiece from China and South Korea, the ministry said.

SEA Tankers, a shipping firm based in Merignac, France, that owns the M/T Gascogne, issued a statement Monday confirming the ship had gone missing. The company had been working for a South Korean firm at the time of the attack, according to the Transportation Ministry.

"The company (is) in contact with the relevant authorities in the region with the objective of re-establishing communication with the vessel's crew," the company said. "The safety of the crew and vessel remain the overriding priority."

A spokeswoman for SEA Tankers declined to confirm the nationalities of the sailors taken hostage.

The attack Sunday comes amid a series of escalating assaults in the Gulf of Guinea, which follows the African continent's southward curve from Liberia to Gabon.

On Monday, pirates attacked another oil tanker anchored off Lagos, Nigeria, shooting one of the crew members, said Noel Choong, a spokesman for the International Maritime Bureau in Malaysia. The sailor died while in transit to a local hospital, the maritime bureau later said, though offering no other details.

A security detail from the Nigerian navy shot back at the attackers, driving them away, the bureau said. Commodore Kabir Aliyu, a spokesman for Nigeria's navy, declined to immediately comment on the attack.

In another attack Thursday off Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta, pirates on several small boats assaulted another tanker.

In a sign of how violent the attacks have grown, the pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the tanker during the onslaught, though it missed the ship, the maritime bureau said. The crew suffered no injuries in the attack and their vessel escaped, though it sustained damage from the gunfire, the bureau said.

Over the last year and a half, piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has escalated from low-level armed robberies to hijackings and cargo thefts. Last year, London-based Lloyd's Market Association - an umbrella group of insurers - listed Nigeria, neighboring Benin and nearby waters in the same risk category as Somalia, where two decades of war and anarchy allowed piracy to flourish. But as piracy has dropped in recent months off Somalia's coast, it's only risen in the Gulf of Guinea.

However, attacks as far west as Ivory Coast are a new development. There have been two other similar hijackings off Abidjan since October.

Pirates in West Africa have been more willing to use violence in their robberies, as they target the cargo, not the crew for ransom as is the case off Somalia.

Experts say many of the pirates come from Nigeria, where corrupt law enforcement allows criminality to thrive and there's a bustling black market for stolen crude oil.

Officials in Ivory Coast said owners of the M/T Gascogne received information Monday suggesting pirates had already sailed the hijacked tanker into Nigerian waters to steal its remaining fuel. In other cases, the crew has been set free after such fuel drops.

"The pirates target oil tankers because they are actually targeting the gas oil," Choong told The Associated Press. "We're talking about millions of dollars."

(AP)

Tuareg rebels in northern Mali said on Monday they had captured two senior Islamist insurgents fleeing French air strikes toward the Algerian border and France pressed ahead with its bombing campaign against al Qaeda's Saharan desert camps.

Pro-autonomy Tuareg MNLA rebels said one of their patrols seized Mohamed Moussa Ag Mohamed, an Islamist leader who imposed harsh sharia (Islamic law) in the desert town of Timbuktu, and Oumeini Ould Baba Akhmed, thought to be responsible for the kidnapping of a French hostage by al Qaeda splinter group MUJWA.

"We chased an Islamist convoy close to the frontier and arrested the two men the day before yesterday," Ibrahim Ag Assaleh, spokesman for the MNLA, told Reuters from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. "They have been questioned and sent to Kidal."

France has deployed nearly 4,000 ground troops, as well as warplanes and armored vehicles in its three-week-old Operation Serval that has broken the Islamist militants' 10-month grip on northern towns. It is now due to gradually hand over to a U.N.-backed African force of some 8,000 troops, known as AFISMA, of which around 3,800 have already been deployed.

Paris and its international partners want to prevent the Islamists from using Mali's vast desert north as a base to launch attacks on neighboring African countries and the West.

After meeting French President Francois Hollande in Paris, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden praised the "decisiveness and incredible competence" of France's operations. He backed France's call for U.N. peacekeepers to be deployed in Mali.

"We agreed on the need to, as quickly as reasonably possible, establish an African-led mission to Mali and, as quickly as is prudent, transition that mission to the United Nations," Biden said, flanked by Hollande.

Paris believes that deploying U.N. peacekeepers to Mali could eliminate problems over funding the African mission and fears of ethnic reprisals by Malian troops against light-skinned Tuaregs and Arabs associated with the Islamists.

BAMAKO HESITATES OVER TALKS

The MNLA, which seized control of northern Mali last year only to be pushed aside by better-armed Islamist groups, regained control of its northern stronghold of Kidal last week when Islamist fighters fled French air strikes into hideouts in the nearby desert and rugged Adrar des Ifoghas mountains.

The Tuareg group says it is willing to help the French-led mission by hunting down Islamists. It has offered to hold peace talks with the government in a bid to heal wounds between Mali's restive Saharan north and the black African-dominated south.

"Until there is a peace deal, we cannot hold national elections," Ag Assaleh said, referring to interim Malian President Dioncounda Traore's plan to hold polls on July 31.

Many in the southern capital Bamako - including army leaders who blame the MNLA for executing some of their troops at the Saharan town of Aguelhoc last year - strongly reject any talks.

"One of the first conditions for reconciliation is to disarm rebel groups," Malian Foreign Minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly told Reuters in Paris. "We must first liberate the north of Mali and then we can organize elections."

French special forces took the airport in Kidal on Tuesday, reaching the most northern city previously held by the Islamist alliance. The French presence at the airport has since been reinforced by two parachute units.

Though the MNLA says it controls Kidal, France's defense ministry said on Monday that 1,800 Chadian troops - part of a U.N.-backed African mission sent to help retake northern Mali - had entered the city.

TARGETING REBEL BASES, DEPOTS

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said warplanes were continuing bombing raids on Islamists in Mali's far north to destroy their supply lines and flush them out of remote areas.

"The objective is to destroy their support bases, their depots because they have taken refuge in the north and northeast of the country and can only stay there in the long-term if they have the means to sustain themselves," Fabius said.

"The army is working to stop that," he told French radio.

Jets attacked rebel camps on Sunday targeting logistics bases and training camps used by the al Qaeda-linked rebels near Tessalit, a town close to the Algerian border.

In all, French jets and attack helicopters have hit 25 targets in Kidal and areas surrounding Aguelhok and Tessalit since Friday, the defense ministry said.

Hollande made a one-day trip to Mali on Saturday, promising to keep troops in the country until the job of restoring government control in the Sahel state was finished. He was welcomed as a savior by cheering Malians.

The rebels' retreat to hideouts in the remote Adrar des Ifoghas mountains - where Paris believes they are holding seven French hostages - heralds a potentially more complicated new phase of France's intervention in its former colony as special forces teams try to track the rebels to their hideouts.

Shehu Abdulkadir, the Nigerian commander of AFISMA, said the African force was preparing a strategy to free the hostages, but he declined to provide any details.

Hollande said on Saturday that Paris would withdraw its troops from Mali once the landlocked West African nation had restored sovereignty over its territory and AFISMA was ready to take over most military operations on the ground.

The deployment of the African force, however, has been badly hampered by shortages of kit and airlift capacity and questions about who will fund the estimated $1 billion cost.

Fabius said French soldiers could soon pull back from Timbuktu. Residents of the ancient caravan town had feted Hollande on Saturday in thanks for their liberation from Islamists, who had handed down punishments including whipping and amputation for breaking sharia.

The rebels also smashed sacred Sufi mausoleums and destroyed or stole some 2,000 ancient manuscripts at the South African-sponsored Baba Ahmed Institute, causing international outcry.

"A withdrawal could happen very quickly," Fabius said. "We're working towards it because we have no desire to stay there for the long-term."