U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Thursday praised the "successful" intervention by France to root out Islamic rebels in northern Mali, and urged Malian leaders to organize elections.

Speaking ahead of talks with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, Kerry said Mali would be among issues discussed during their first meeting at the State Department.

Boncana Amadou, the 93-year-old chief of the village of Kadji in northern Mali, points a worn finger toward the Niger river and a strip of land down the middle that locals call "Fundamentalist Island".

"Do you see that there?" Amadou says. "Those are Malian fundamentalists living there, and they've been sheltering Islamists from MUJAO."

French troops on Wednesday defused a homemade bomb they said contained 600 kilos (1,300 pounds) of explosives in the center of northern Mali's largest city Gao, the target of several attacks by Islamist rebels in recent days.

The bomb, which was made of four metal barrels filled with explosives and connecting wires, was in the courtyard of an abandoned house, with heavy machine gun cartridges lying on the ground nearby and several smaller bombs inside the building, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Russia has delivered a consignment of firearms to the Mali government which is fighting rebels and is in talks about supplying more, the head of Russia's arms export agency said Wednesday.

"We have delivered firearms. Literally two weeks ago another consignment was sent. These are completely legal deliveries," Rosobornexport chief Anatoly Isaikin said, quoted by the Interfax news agency. "We are in talks about sending more, in small quantities."

Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has called for jihad, or holy war, to thwart France's military intervention in Mali against Islamist rebels, SITE Intelligence agency reported on Tuesday.

"Supporting the Muslims in Mali is a duty for every capable Muslim with life and money, everyone according to their ability," the Sharia Committee of the extremist group said in a statement reported by U.S.-based SITE, which monitors extremist Internet forums.

France bombed Islamist targets in northern Mali on Monday following a string of guerrilla attacks by the extremists a month after Paris launched an offensive to drive them from its former colony.

In a pre-dawn attack, witnesses said a French army helicopter destroyed a central police station in the northern city of Gao from where rebels from the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) had opened fire from the station on Malian troops Sunday, sparking an hours-long street battle.

The rebels France is battling in northern Mali are some of the very same fighters it helped arm in Libya, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday.

"In Mali, France is fighting against those it armed in Libya against (Moammar) Gadhafi's regime in violation of the U.N. Security Council (arms) embargo," Lavrov said in extracts of a television interview published by Russian news agencies.

Islamist rebel group the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) claimed responsibility for an attack by gunmen Sunday on the city of Gao in northern Mali and a suicide bombing the day before.

"Today God's faithful successfully attacked the Malian army, which let the enemies of Islam come to Gao. MUJAO also claims the suicide bombing yesterday that made the Malian soldiers flee," said Abou Walid Sahraoui, spokesman for the group, which had already claimed another suicide blast Friday, the country's first.

Northern Mali's largest city was rocked by its second suicide bombing in two days, a soldier said Sunday, as Islamist rebels continued defying a security lock-down on territory reclaimed by French-led forces.

The twin suicide blasts, the first such attacks in Mali, underlined the threat of a drawn-out insurgency as France, whose warplanes were still bombing northern territory Sunday morning, tries to map an exit strategy nearly one month into its intervention in its former colony.

Malian troops bolstered security at army checkpoints and villagers detained two youths allegedly strapped with explosives on Saturday after Islamists claimed responsibility for the country's first suicide attack.

Residents of a village near Gao, the largest city in the north, detained two youths they said were wearing explosive-rigged belts and traveling on the same road where the suicide bombing on Friday wounded a soldier at a checkpoint.