Mali's army said Saturday it had foiled a suicide bomb attack, a day after the first such strike targeting Franco-Malian forces who have battled against Islamist militants.
Captain Modibo Traore, an army spokesman, said two men were arrested with explosives in Gao, a northern city that French forces recently wrested back from the al-Qaeda-linked militants.
"The two young people were arrested with a bomb at the entrance of Gao," said Traore, adding that they had come from a nearby town.
Mali suffered its first suicide bombing Friday when a 16-year-old blew up his explosives-packed motorcycle near an army checkpoint.
Only he died, but several others were wounded.
The attack sparked fears that, after the lightning French-led campaign, the troops will be targeted by more militarily "asymmetrical" strikes from Islamist militias.
Meanwhile, the capital Bamako was calm, a day after clashes between rival army factions left two people dead and 13 wounded.
Interim president Dioncounda Traore condemned the clashes between military units and "red beret" paratroopers, loyalists of former president Amadou Toumani Toure who was ousted in a coup last year.
"I am deeply saddened by the clashes within the Malian army," the interim leader said on state-run television, calling for a "definitive end" to the internecine fighting.
Late Friday, Mali prosecutors said they had issued international arrest warrants on terrorism and other charges against leaders of ethnic Tuareg and Islamist rebel groups.
They listed 28 names, including alleged members of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith).
The MNLA, a Tuareg separatist militia, ousted the government from the north in early 2012, shortly after a military-backed coup against the president created a power vaccuum in Bamako.
The secular Tuareg fighters, who seek an independent homeland they call Azawad, were quickly swept aside by radical Islamists allied with al-Qaeda, who enforced strict Islamic law.
A French-led military campaign against the Islamist rebels began on January 11, using attack helicopters and fighter jets to stop the fighters who had begun to move south towards Bamako.
Along with African and Malian troops, the French forces have put the rebels on the back foot, seizing nearly all their urban strongholds, as the rebels have retreated into the desert.