BAMAKO (Mali), March 3: Heavy clashes in northern Mali have left at least 50 rebel fighters and a French soldier dead, officials said on Sunday, following reports that two top Islamist militants were killed in recent days.

The reports from Chad that its soldiers killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the mastermind of January’s assault on an Algerian gas plant that killed 37 foreign hostages, as well as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) commander Abdelhamid Abou Zeid have not been confirmed by other sources.

But both French and Malian officials said clashes had intensified in the region in recent days, with French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian saying a French soldier had died “in some of the heaviest fighting that we have carried out on Malian territory.”

A Malian military source said the fighting continued on Sunday near the town of Gao in northern Mali, where Malian troops backed by French forces are hunting down Islamist rebels driven from the region’s main cities after a lightning French intervention launched in mid-January.

“At least 50 MUJAO Islamists have been killed since the day before Friday,” the source said, referring to rebels from the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa.

France said one of its soldiers had been killed on Saturday evening in north Mali, the third death of a French serviceman since the intervention began.

The defence ministry identified the soldier as 26-year-old Corporal Cedric Charenton, from the First Parachute Chasseur Regiment, who had been deployed in Mali since Jan 25 and had previously served in Afghanistan and Gabon.

France has so far suffered relatively few casualties during its operations in Mali. A legionnaire with the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment was killed in clashes on February 19 and a helicopter pilot died at the very start of the operation.

The French army said at least 15 Islamist rebels had been “neutralised” — killed or wounded — in the fighting on Saturday that led to the soldier’s death.—AFP