Thirty-two Malian soldiers arrested with ex-junta chief Amadou Sanogo have been freed six weeks after their arrest, one of their lawyers said on Friday.

The soldiers had been denied visits from friends or family, and had been on hunger strike for three days before their release on Thursday, Tiesolo Konare told Agence France Presse.

France will cut its troops in Mali to 1,600 by the middle of next month from the current level of 2,500, President Francois Hollande said Wednesday.

Speaking at an airbase in Creil in northern France, Hollande said the "situation is well under control" in Mali, where the "key objectives of the mission have been accomplished."

French and Chadian troops have destroyed almost six tons of explosives and weapons found in Mali's rebel-infested desert north, the United Nations said on Monday.

The Chadian soldiers, from the U.N.'s MINUSMA peacekeeping mission, were patrolling an area near the Algerian border with troops from France's Operation Serval when they made the discovery, a U.N. statement said.

Mali's government has asked for former president Amadou Toumani Toure to be prosecuted for "high treason" for allegedly allowing the northern half of the country to fall to armed Islamists, a judicial source said on Saturday.

The newly-elected national assembly will decide whether to allow the legal proceedings to go ahead after ministers referred Toure to the supreme court, the source told Agence France Presse.

Militants shelled a camp for French troops and the United Nations MINUSMA peacekeeping force in northeastern Mali, military sources told AFP on Tuesday, but failed to do any damage.

"Two shells were fired Monday night by unidentified persons at the Kidal camp for French troops and MINUSMA," said a Malian military source who added that there was "no damage or casualties".

The second round of Mali's parliamentary polls met international standards, the European Union's chief election observer in the troubled west African nation said on Monday.

Louis Michel told reporters in the capital Bamako his team had positively evaluated 98 percent of the 705 polling stations observed on Sunday.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed Sunday that 19 armed Islamists had been killed in a French-led military operation this week targeting Al-Qaida-linked rebels in restive northern Mali.

"There were 19 killed," Fabius said on Europe 1 radio.

Malians began voting on Sunday in the second round of parliamentary elections intended to cap the nation's return to democracy, but overshadowed by the deaths of two U.N. peacekeepers in an Islamist attack.

The polls mark the troubled west African nation's first steps to recovery after it was upended by a military coup in March last year, finalizing a process begun with the election of its first post-conflict president in August.

At least two U.N. troops were killed on Saturday in a suicide attack in Mali's northeaster rebel bastion of Kidal, which came a day before the country holds a second round of legislative polls, a U.N. source said.

The soldiers were part of the U.N. peacekeeping force known as MINUSMA and died when a suicide bomber ploughed his explosive-laden car into a bank that they were guarding.

The French army is staging a large operation against Islamist fighters in the Timbuktu region of northern Mali ahead of weekend parliamentary elections, military sources said Friday.

A French military source in the Malian capital, Bamako, said "military operations are ongoing" after French troops killed 19 militants in the area on Tuesday.