Militants killed at least five people in a gun attack on a restaurant in Mali's capital in the early hours of Saturday, including a French citizen and a Belgian security officer with the EU delegation in the country, authorities said.

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Mali's desert north, where French forces wrested control of territory from separatist rebels and al Qaeda-linked fighters, is plagued by frequent political violence -- but this is the first militant attack for years in Bamako, in the south.

Three Malians were killed in the violence in and around La Terrasse restaurant, which is popular with expatriates, the government said. The attack began at around 1am (0100 GMT) and left nine people wounded, said a senior security official, adding that two people had been arrested.

Senior police officer Falaye Kanté said, "There were two individuals who were armed and hooded. One burst into the La Terrasse restaurant and opened fire on people. Then he got into a vehicle in which the other was waiting."

"As they fled down a neighbouring street, they shot a Belgian man who was in front of his house. He's dead. Not far away they came across a police vehicle and threw a grenade, killing the driver," he told Reuters.

Those killed included a girl who died in hospital, Kanté said. Witnesses said police secured the street where the restaurant shooting took place because of unexploded grenades.

Dozens of police officers secured the area but the few witnesses to the attack were initially refusing to testify, fearing reprisals.

The French embassy in Bamako issued a message to all French nationals in the city to exercise caution if they had to leave their homes.

Two arrested

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A police source said two suspects had been arrested and were being interrogated, without revealing their identities or nationalities.

French President François Hollande denounced "with the greatest force the cowardly attack", according to a statement from the presidency.

It said Hollande would meet Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita to offer Paris's help to the former French colony, adding that security had been beefed up at the French embassy and other French installations in the country.

"My thoughts are with the victims and their families," said Didier Reynders, the foreign minister of Belgium, which has confirmed one of its nationals was among the dead.

EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini said one of the victims worked with the European Union in Mali, where the 28-nation bloc runs a mission to assist police and national guard forces.

The French embassy in Bamako issued a message to all French nationals in the city to exercise caution if they ventured out of their homes.

Mali's vast desert north is riven by ethnic rivalries and an Islamist insurgency, and has struggled for stability and peace since a coup in 2012.

Jihadists linked to al-Qaeda controlled an area of desert the size of Texas for more than nine months until a French-led military intervention in 2013 that partly drove them from the region.

Militant uprisings

The West African nation is also struggling with a militant Tuareg movement that has launched four uprisings since 1962 to fight the army over the territory they claim as their homeland and call Azawad.

But day-to-day life in the capital has been largely unaffected by the northern conflict, and bloodshed blamed on terrorism is rare in the city of 1.8 million.

More than a dozen French citizens have been taken captive in Africa in recent years, but deaths of Westerners at the hands of jihadists in Mali remain an uncommon, if chilling, reminder of the country's instability.

The militant Islamist group, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), claimed responsibility for the 2013 murders of two French journalists shot dead in Mali's desert town of Kidal -- Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon.

Saturday's attack came less than 24 hours after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Mali's Tuareg rebel groups to sign a peace deal agreed nearly a week ago in Algeria.

The Malian government signed the agreement last weekend, along with some northern armed groups, but the main Tuareg rebel alliance, known as the Coordination, asked for more time.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)

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