An Algerian court sentenced 14 Malian members of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) to 20 years' jail for arms smuggling and entering the country illegally, El Khabar daily reported Monday.

The Malians, who were sentenced on Sunday by the criminal court in the southern town of Ouargla, were accused of entering Algeria illegally with a shipment of weapons from Libya, the Arabic-language daily said.

The head of the EU military committee said on Saturday he was "confident" in the ability of the first Mali battalion being trained by Europe to battle the Islamist insurgency raging in the north.

General Patrick de Rousiers told reporters in the capital Bamako he had encountered "professional and extremely competent personnel" after visiting the European Union Training Mission (EUTM) in Mali.

A senior Mali army officer accused France Saturday of picking favorites among the country's warring militias after its troops attacked Arab rebels who had captured a village from armed Tuaregs.

The intervention came on Friday after the Arab Movement of Azawad (MAA) took the northern desert settlement of Anefis from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a Malian and another African military source said.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon on Friday named former Dutch government minister Bert Koenders as head of the key U.N. mission in Mali where French and African troops are battling Islamist militants.

Koenders will head U.N. efforts to help Mali's interim government to re-establish control over the African state where Islamist extremists took over the north of the country for 10 months until France intervened in January.

France's first lady Valerie Trierweiler began a tour of Mali on Thursday with a visit to Gao, one of several northern cities liberated by a French-led military operation against an Islamist occupation.

President Francois Hollande's partner, on a 48-hour trip as "part of a mission for children and women", highlighted the role of female soldiers in securing the north for the former French colony as part of Operation Serval.

International donors pledged a much more than expected 3.2 billion euros in aid Wednesday to help Mali avoid the mistakes which allowed Islamist rebels to seize vast swathes of the troubled country.

The meeting, co-hosted by the European Union and France, Mali's former colonial ruler, had an initial target of two billion euros ($2.6 billion) to cover about half the cost of a 2013-14 economic and political reconstruction program agreed in cooperation with the international community.

French President Francois Hollande said Friday that elections scheduled in troubled Mali for July must be held nationwide, as instability in the north and a refugee crisis have raised doubts this will be possible.

"We must make sure that Malian civil administration can be put in place everywhere for the organisation of these elections. And France, through its military presence and other armies, will contribute to this," he said during a press conference in Paris.

Suicide bombers targeted troops in two towns in war-torn northern Mali on Friday, leaving four of the attackers dead and two Malian soldiers wounded, military sources said.

The first attack was against soldiers from neighboring Niger stationed in Menaka, a Saharan desert commune 300 kilometers (185 miles) east of Gao, with only the bomber being killed, Nigerien and Malian military sources on the ground told Agence France Presse.

Press reports warned Thursday that Tunisia was "at war with international terrorism" after the government revealed that jihadists being pursued by the army have ties to al-Qaida and the Islamist rebellion in Mali.

French-language daily Le Temps raised fears of "a spiral of deadly violence similar to the one that ravaged Algeria" during its so-called black decade of civil war in the 1990s.

President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that France was taking seriously a call by al-Qaida's north African wing for Muslims worldwide to launch attacks against the country's interests over its military operation in Mali.

An AQIM leader called on Muslims to "attack French interests everywhere" in a video message posted online.