Five people including two Europeans and a Malian police officer were killed in an assault on a Bamako nightclub Saturday, in the first suspected attack targeting Westerners in a city braced for jihadist violence since 2012.

At least one masked gunman entered the club in an area of the Malian capital popular with expatriates around 1:00 am (0100 GMT) and sprayed the venue with automatic gunfire and threw grenades, witnesses said.

Divided into rival armed factions, plagued by drug trafficking and at the mercy of jihadism, northern Mali will only find peace through reconciliation among its warring tribes, experts say.

The west African nation's vast desert north is riven by ethnic rivalries, a Tuareg rebellion and an Islamist insurgency and has struggled for stability and peace since a military coup in 2012.

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday urged Mali's Tuareg rebel groups to sign on to a peace deal that it welcomed as an important step towards lasting peace in Mali.

The Malian government signed the agreement reached in Algiers at the weekend as did some northern armed groups, but the main Tuareg rebel alliance, known as the Coordination, asked for more time.

The Malian government signed a peace agreement with some northern armed groups on Sunday in Algiers but the main Tuareg rebel alliance asked for more time to consult its grassroots.

The deal, hammered out in eight months of tough negotiations in neighboring Algeria, provides for the transfer of a raft of powers from Bamako to the north, an area the size of Texas that the rebels refer to as "Azawad".

Algerian mediators hosting peace talks between the Mali government and militants have produced a draft agreement transferring a raft of powers from Bamako to the country's restive north.

Ethnic divisions run deep in the west African nation's northern desert, the cradle of a Tuareg separatist movement which has spawned several rebellions since the 1960s.

The Malian government agreed a deal with six armed groups Thursday to cease hostilities as part of U.N.-sponsored peace talks aimed at ending the crisis in the country's north.

The two sides agreed to "observe an immediate cessation of all forms of violence, and to refrain from any provocative acts or comments," according to a copy of the document seen by Agence France-Presse.

Seven U.N. peacekeepers have been wounded in an explosion in northeastern Mali, military sources from the force told Agence France-Presse on Monday.

The cause of Sunday's blast was not immediately clear but the soldiers were in Tabankort, a powder-keg town in the foothills of the Ifoghas mountains and the scene of deadly violence between rival militias. 

Three independent experts will travel to Mali soon to begin an inquiry into the deaths of three protesters allegedly by U.N. troops, the U.N. said Friday.

Witnesses said the three Malians were shot in the northern town of Gao by peacekeepers during protests on January 27 against a U.N. plan to assert control over an area north of the town.

Chad's President Idriss Deby has taken up the fight against Boko Haram at the risk of offending diplomatic sensibilities in Africa, but to the delight of his international allies.

One Western diplomat described Deby, who seized power in 1990, as "first and foremost a fighter," who for years had battled rebels intent on ousting him from power, while at the same time arming those fighting the authorities in neighboring Sudan.

Fresh violence erupted between rebels and pro-government fighters in restive northern Mali on Wednesday, army sources said, the latest clashes in more than a month of bloodshed.

The two sides exchanged fire near Tabankort, a powder-keg town beneath the Ifoghas mountains which straddle the border with Algeria, a source from MINUSMA, the United Nations' peacekeeping force, told AFP.