The U.N. Security Council on Friday urged a holdout rebel group in Mali to initial a peace deal and said it was ready to slap sanctions on those who resume hostilities.

The 15-member council said the March 1 peace accord was a "historic opportunity" for peace in Mali following the Islamist takeover in the north in 2012 that brought the country to the brink of collapse.

Mali's foreign minister asked the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to ratchet up pressure on a holdout rebel group standing in the way of a landmark peace deal.

Abdoulaye Diop urged the 15-member council to endorse the Algerian-brokered draft peace accord and to threaten sanctions against those who block it.

A Dutch hostage freed after being held by al-Qaida-linked extremists in Mali for more than three years was due to arrive in the capital Bamako on Tuesday, Dutch and Malian diplomatic sources said.

Train driver Sjaak Rijke, abducted while on holiday in Timbuktu in November 2011, was freed in a raid on al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) by French special forces on Monday.

Mali has urged separatist rebels in the north to commit to a peace deal signed by the government several weeks ago, saying their claimed homeland "does not exist."

The Algiers Agreement, hammered out over eight months of tough negotiations, aims to bring a lasting peace to a sprawling area of northern desert that the rebels refer to as "Azawad."

French special forces on Monday rescued a Dutch train driver kidnapped nearly four years ago in Mali by Al-Qaida's north Africa arm in an operation that killed several jihadists.

France's defense ministry said Sjaak Rijke, kidnapped in Timbuktu in northern Mali in November 2011, was freed during "military action carried out by the French army's special forces."

Militants shelled the largest city in restive northern Mali on Sunday, killing a civilian and wounding three relatives as they slept, hospital and security sources told Agene France Presse.

A police official in Gao said the deadly rocket strike hit a household in the north of the city, while two more landed near a clinic in the city centre and in a field to the south.

Armed men on motorcycles attacked a village in central Mali, killing two civilians, officials said on Saturday.

Souleymane Diko, a local teacher, said two men on motorcycles had been reported behaving suspiciously three hours earlier.

The international Red Cross said Tuesday it has ordered staff in northern Mali not to travel out of urban centers after jihadists killed an aid worker in the restive area.

"We have decided to temporarily suspend all our movements in northern Mali, while we wait to understand this incident more clearly," International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Valery Mbaoh Nana told AFP.

Exiled former Malian leader Amadou Toumani Toure has given evidence in a probe into alleged Libyan funding for Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 French presidential election campaign, an aide said Tuesday.

Toure, who has been in the Senegalese capital Dakar since being overthrown in a March 2012 coup, was summoned by Senegalese detectives following a formal request from France, the aide said.

An international Red Cross worker was killed and a local colleague wounded when the aid truck they were driving came under fire in northern Mali on Monday, in an attack claimed by the MUJAO jihadist group.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was "profoundly dismayed by the death of one of its staff in Mali", after his aid truck was attacked near the northern city of Gao Monday morning. The nationality of the victim was not immediately released.