The first group of 70 EU military instructors, deployed to train Mali's deeply divided and underfunded army to take on Islamist rebels, arrived Friday in the capital, a French officer said.

"We are here to enable the Malian army to hold all the nation's territory and so that Mali can have a good army at its disposal, prepared to engage," said Colonel Bruno Heluin, the commander of the first group of what will ultimately be 500 European trainers.

Islamists fleeing advancing French forces in Mali have been spotted in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, a Sudanese rebel commander told Agence France Presse on Friday.

"We saw them," said Abdel Wahid Mohammed al-Nur, commander of a Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction which is fighting Khartoum's troops in Darfur.

French forces on Friday took control of the strategic oasis town of Tessalit in far northeastern Mali, one of the last bastions of Islamist rebels, the military said.

General Staff spokesman Colonel Thierry Burkhard said French forces "control Tessalit" after an overnight operation that saw special forces parachute into the local airport.

The U.N. cultural organization UNESCO is assessing the damage wreaked on Mali's historic city of Timbuktu and repairing the mausoleums of saints alone will cost up to five million euros, its chief said Friday.

Known as "the City of 333 Saints" or "The Pearl of the Desert", Timbuktu was listed as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1988 and is an ancient center of Islamic learning.

A suicide bomber blew himself up in Mali on Friday as a dramatic turn towards guerrilla tactics by Islamists and an outbreak of fighting among feuding soldiers show the war is far from won for the embattled nation.

In Mali's first-ever suicide bombing, an attacker drove a motorcycle up to an army checkpoint in Gao, the largest town in the north, and detonated an explosive belt, wounding one soldier, said First Sergeant Mamadou Keita.

Islamic states said on Thursday they support efforts to help Mali "regain its territorial integrity," in an apparent reference to France's military intervention in the African country.

In the final statement of the 12th summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, delegates stressed "firm support for current efforts by Mali to regain its territorial integrity and its authority over all national territory."

Three out of four French support their country's military intervention to oust Islamists in Mali, with support for the action at its highest since President Francois Hollande sent in troops a month ago, a poll showed.

Seventy-three percent back the move, with just 27 percent against it, said the survey by IFOP to be published Friday.

Four Malian troops were killed by a landmine in territory reclaimed from Islamist rebels, police said Thursday as France mulled handing over its four-week-old intervention to U.N. peacekeepers.

The deadly explosion Wednesday between the northern towns of Douentza and Gao came six days after a similar blast in the same area killed two Malian soldiers, underlining the danger the Islamist fighters still pose despite fleeing the towns under their control.

France is aiming to have the United Nations take over peacekeeping operations in Mali by April, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Wednesday.

Fabius told journalists France was working to have the current African-led mission put under the umbrella of the United Nations and confirmed France was planning to begin drawing back its troops in March.

Senegal has boosted security in the capital Dakar and a northern city as a war against radical Islamists rages in neighboring Mali, police said Wednesday.

Armored cars and police vehicles were visible in downtown Dakar and police were carrying out checks on motorists in various parts of the capital, an Agence France Presse journalist said.