A suicide bomber blew himself up Saturday in the northern Malian city of Timbuktu, raising fears of a new wave of violence by Islamist insurgents after a separate land mine blast killed two soldiers.

An army officer said a Malian soldier had been wounded in the suicide attack at an army barricade in Timbuktu, the fabled Sahara caravan city's second in nine days.

The 4,000 French soldiers deployed in Mali to fight Islamist rebels will be reduced to 1,000 by the end of the year, French President Francois Hollande said Thursday.

"We will start withdrawing at the end of April," he said in an interview with France 2 television. "In July, there will be no more than 2,000 soldiers in Mali. At the end of the year, there will only be 1,000 troops."

A rebel group seeking independence in northern Mali said on Thursday it had appointed an "administrator" to Kidal in a show of strength after French-led troops liberated the town from an Islamist occupation.

The Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA) told Agence France Presse that Mohamed Ali Ag Albessaty, previously a local government functionary, would serve as its top official for Kidal.

EU military instructors will start training their first battalion of Malian soldiers next week, in a bid to get the army ready to defend the crisis-torn country once French troops withdraw, the head of the mission said Wednesday.

The European Union Training Mission (EUTM) for Mali is tasked with helping the ill-trained army, just as French-led forces work to secure the north of the country from al-Qaida-linked rebels.

British troops have arrived in Mali as part of an EU mission to train local forces fighting Islamist insurgents, the Ministry of Defense in London announced Wednesday.

The team of 40 will help develop the Malian armed forces' infantry and artillery skills, among about 500 troops from 22 European Union countries.

The Malian army said Wednesday 63 soldiers and some 600 Islamists had been killed since the launch of the French-led military action to regain the country's north from Islamist groups linked to al-Qaida.

"Since the start of the military offensive launched January 11, 2013 against the Islamists, the death toll is 63 Malian soldiers killed and our opponents have lost about 600 fighters," army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Souleymane Maiga told Agence France Presse.

Up to 11,200 troops could be needed for a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali but a "parallel" military force will have to battle radical Islamists, U.N. leader Ban Ki-Moon said Tuesday.

The 11,200 troops could only cover main towns "assessed to be at highest risk," Ban said in a grim report on conditions in Mali that the U.N. Security Council will discuss Wednesday.

An armed Islamist group which occupied northern Mali last year vowed Tuesday to continue its fight to drive out the French and African troops that routed it in a lightning military operation in January.

Ansar Dine, Arabic for "defenders of the faith", was one of three militant organizations to take advantage of the disarray following a coup to claim control of Mali's vast northern desert, imposing a brutal form of sharia law in its cities.

On a market stall in the Malian capital, stickers of Lionel Messi, Madonna and Osama bin Laden fight for space with the far more popular image of Francois Hollande, the French President.

Other stalls offer tricolors and T-shirts bearing pro-French slogans as Mali, bursting with gratitude over France's intervention to drive Islamists out of its northern cities, celebrates its former colonial ruler like never before.

A senior Egyptian Islamist on Saturday called on France to withdraw its forces from Mali, comparing its intervention in the African state with the United States campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

France's intervention in January to rout Islamist militants amounted to "colonialism," said Rashad al-Bayoumi, the deputy leader of Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood movement.