Mali goes to polls

Millions of Malians are expected to vote in parliamentary elections intended to cap the troubled west African nation's return to democracy.

The polls on Sunday mark the troubled west African nation's first steps to recovery after it was upended by a military coup in March last year, finalising a process begun with the election of its first post-conflict president in August.

Some 6.5 million Malians are eligible to elect a new national assembly, with more than 1,000 candidates running for 147 seats.

But voting takes place amid an upsurge in violence by al-Qaeda-linked rebels who stalk the vast northern desert, an ever-present danger to French and African troops who are tasked with providing security for the election alongside the Malian army.

French security forces witnessed their first attack in the capital Bamako on Friday, when a police officer working with the army was lucky to escape serious injury after a gunman thought to be influenced by Islamists opened fire on him.

A day earlier militants had shelled the northern city of Gao, and although their rockets fell harmlessly short of the main urban centre, the attack underlined the continuing security threat.

Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents ousted by French and African troops in January from the northern towns they had occupied last year resumed their deadly insurgency on September 28, after a lull of several months.

Since then, a dozen civilians as well as Malian and Chadian soldiers in the United Nations' MINUSMA peacekeeping mission have been killed in the country's vast desert north.

In a grisly reminder for the West of the ongoing security crisis, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb on November 2 kidnapped and shot dead two French radio journalists who had come to Kidal city, the capital of the region, 1,500km northeast of Bamako.

United Nation peacekeepers, the Malian army and French troops have the job of ensuring voters' safety in the region, the stronghold of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA).