Five people were killed in a remote Malian town yesterday in car bomb attacks by Islamists on Tuareg MNLA rebels with close links to French forces, a spokesman for the Tuareg fighters said.

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.

Yesterday’s car bomb attacks in In Khalil, 1,700 kilometres 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 yesterday, and a Malian officer said an Islamist fighter was still holed up near the banks of the Niger River.

Moussa Ag Assarid, a Paris-based representative of the pro-autonomy MNLA Tuareg fighters, said suspected Islamists had first tried to drive into a building in In-Khalil, but the car was destroyed by fighters ahead of impact.

A second car then drove into the group’s local operations centre and exploded. Aside from the two bombers, Ag Assarid said three MNLA fighters were killed and three others wounded.

The MNLA swept across northern Mali in April, taking advantage of a power vacuum left by a coup in Bamako.

But its revolt was eclipsed by a loose alliance of Islamist jihadists, including Al-Qaeda’s North African wing, AQIM.

France is six weeks into an offensive to clear Islamist fighters from Mali’s north, which Paris said was in danger of becoming a springboard for attacks on the region and the West.

In the meantime, the MNLA says it has retaken control of Kidal and towns around the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, where Islamists are believed to be hiding near the Algerian border.