EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Friday that a military offensive by terrorist groups based in northern Mali called for an "enhanced and accelerated" international response.

As Mali government forces went on the counter-attack, Ashton said "this situation highlights the need for enhanced and accelerated international engagement in support of the restoration of stability and state authority throughout Mali, in line with U.N. resolution 2085."

Malian government forces on Friday launched an offensive against Islamists who control the north of the country with backing from the French and other foreign military, military and political sources said.

The counter attack was aimed at stemming advances made by al-Qaida-linked radicals who this week triggered international alarm with a push south towards the capital, Bamako, a military officer told AFP.

The U.N. Security Council called for foreign troops to be quickly sent to Mali on Friday to contain a new offensive by radical Islamists who control the north of the country and are vowing to capture more terrain.

The fresh fighting in Mali has re-ignited Western fears that the al-Qaida-linked militants who currently control an area the size of France could capture even more territory and turn it into the same type of sanctuary that Afghanistan was under the Taliban.

The United Nations Security Council was to hold emergency talks Thursday on the crisis in Mali, diplomats said, warning that rebel forces were closing in on a key government-held town.

Diplomatic sources at U.N. headquarters in New York said the 15-member council would meet after hearing Islamist guerrillas were within 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) of the strategic front-line settlement of Mopti.

Armed Islamists who control northern Mali on Thursday captured a government town in the country's center and will push further south, an Ansar Dine official told AFP.

"We are currently in Konna for the jihad. We almost entirely control the town. Afterward we are going to continue" heading south, Abdou Dardar, who was reached by telephone from the capital Bamako, told AFP.

Malian troops deployed to the central town of Mopti exchanged gunfire Wednesday with members of armed Islamist groups occupying the country's vast desert north, a soldier told AFP.

"We have launched operations against the enemy, who attempted to fight back. We are going to oust them," the soldier said by telephone from the town of Kona, near the edge of the government-controlled zone. A Kona resident confirmed the clashes, saying there had been heavy-weapons fire.

Malian soldiers fired warning shots at Islamist fighters overnight amid fears that they are planning to advance on the government-controlled south of the impoverished country, a military source said Tuesday.

The fighters retreated after the firing near the town of Kona in the central Mopti region, the source told Agence France Presse.

One of the Islamist groups controlling north Mali said in its political program handed to regional mediators that it wants autonomy for the north and the rule of sharia law, according to the document seen Friday.

Ansar Dine, or "Defenders of the Faith", handed the text to Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore, the top mediator in the Mali crisis, on Tuesday.

Mali's new Prime Minister Diango Cissoko called Thursday for military intervention by an African force to help take back the Islamist-controlled north "as quickly as possible".

"We have confidence in this intervention," Cissoko told journalists in Abidjan after meeting with Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara, the current head of the West African bloc ECOWAS which is preparing the intervention force.

Radical Islamists controlling the north in Mali have sent death threats to several senior Muslim chiefs in the country, officials said Thursday.

One of the people to receive the threats is Cherif Ousmane Madani Haidara, who heads a Muslim association that groups tens of thousands of followers.