Nearly 100 people were killed in a gruesome overnight attack on a village in central Mali, in the latest violence to strike the fragile region, officials said Monday.

Mali's president has named a new government after its predecessor resigned last month amid widespread protests over an upsurge of deadly inter-communal violence, a presidency statement said.

Armed men killed 18 civilians in two ambushes in Mali's restive central region, officials said Friday.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani sent Wednesday a written message to Mali President Ibrahim Boubaker Keita, pertaining to the bilateral relations between the two countries and means of supporting and developing them

Suspected jihadists killed at least 12 soldiers in an attack Sunday in central Mali, a security source told AFP, updating an earlier toll.

Malian soldiers shot dead at least one villager and injured others after a detonation they mistook for an attack in a region plagued by jihadist violence, residents and a military source said Tuesday.

Six people have been killed in attacks on villages of the Dogon ethnic community in central Mali, local officials and a security source said as the UN mission called for an end to the "spiral of violence" afflicting the region.

More than 130 people were killed in an attack on a Fulani village in central Mali on Saturday, the United Nations said, as a delegation visited the country.

Seventeen civilians were killed and 15 were wounded in a blast caused by a booby-trapped corpse in central Mali, security sources and a local official said on Wednesday.

French warplanes struck a group of militants in central Mali over the weekend, killing or wounding 15 of them, the defence ministry in Paris said Monday.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Sunday urged partners to stand with Paris in driving back militant violence in the Sahel.

Three UN peacekeepers in Mali have been killed by suspected bandits while travelling on leave along the road from the capital Bamako to neighbouring Guinea, sources said.