Malians voted on Sunday in parliamentary elections intended to cap the troubled west African nation's return to democracy but overshadowed by the threat of Islamist reprisals.

The polls mark Mali's first steps to recovery after it was plunged into chaos by a military coup in March last year, finalizing a process begun with the election of its first post-conflict president in August.

A French policeman told Friday how he cheated death after being shot outside his home in Mali, the first such attack since Paris launched a military offensive against Islamists in its former colony.

Speaking soon after the attack in the capital Bamako, the officer, on secondment with the French army, described how he was ambushed by a gunman who opened fire, but said he managed to escape with his life after being grazed by a bullet.

Rockets were fired on northern Mali's largest city of Gao Thursday, days before legislative elections are to be held in the troubled west African nation, security sources said.

The first shot was heard around 5:00 am (0500 GMT), a security source in Gao said, adding that it was "a powerful shot, which made a lot of noise but left no damage".

Three French soldiers were wounded Wednesday in rebel-infested northern Mali when their armored truck hit a landmine, military sources said.

"A vehicle of the French army was hit by an explosion likely caused by a bomb, a mine on which the vehicle drove, around 1:00 am (0100 GMT) on Wednesday. Three French soldiers were wounded but their lives are not in danger," a Malian security source told Agence France Presse.

Opponents of a coup that embroiled Mali in months of political turmoil voiced anger Wednesday over the failure of its leader to comply with a court summons over alleged violence involving his men.

Amadou Sanogo was ordered in October to answer questions before a judge about "the deaths in the last mutiny against him" at his former headquarters in the central town of Kati, and "all violence in recent times" of which his men have been accused.

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said on Sunday his government would begin training and equipping Malian police to support their fight against terrorism in the country's rebel-infested desert north.

He made the announcement after meeting Mali's president and prime minister on a two-day visit as part of a wider regional tour focused on security, as France begins to wrap up a military operation in its former colony to oust al-Qaida-linked militants.

Malian Tuaregs laid waste to public buildings in the northeastern town of Kidal Thursday, in protest at a decision by separatist leaders to end their occupation of state premises, residents said.

The protesters included dozens of women and youths who had been holding a sit-in outside the governor's offices and the local TV and radio offices of state broadcaster ORTM, which the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) had occupied for about nine months, according to residents and an army source.

French forces have "neutralized" several al-Qaida members in Mali's troubled north, where the group claimed responsibility for the execution of two French journalists, the chief of defense staff in Paris said Thursday.

The special operation overnight in the desert also led to the seizure of weapons, Admiral Edouard Guillaud said on Europe 1 radio. He did not specify if the al-Qaida members had been killed or captured.

A man suspected of having planned the kidnapping of two French journalists who were murdered in Mali is a Tuareg drug trafficker linked to the north African al-Qaida branch, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

The man, Bayes Ag Bakabo, is a key suspect in the kidnapping which led to the deaths of Radio France Internationale journalists Ghislaine Dupont, 57, and Claude Verlon, 55.

Mali's government is confident that the shaky security situation in the desert north will not stop nationwide legislative elections from going ahead later this month, a minister said in an interview published Sunday.

"We believe that things can improve by November 24 as far as the legislative elections are concerned," Cheick Oumar Diarrah, minister of northern reconciliation and development, said in an interview with TV5 Monde, Radio France Internationale (RFI) and the influential daily Le Monde.