At least 35 people have been killed after a suicide car bombing hit a military camp in the northern Malian city of Gao, according to a government statement read out on national television.
President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita declared a three-day mourning period following Wednesday's attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.
The attack came just days after Francois Hollande, the French president, visited the camp.
France sent troops to Mali at the request of the government there in early 2013 to prevent an advance by armed rebels on the capital Bamako.
Gaoseized by armed groups in 2012 before French forces drove them out a year lateris considered the best-secured town in northern Mali with multiple UN, French and Malian army checkpoints along main roads.
However, the offices of the UN peacekeeping mission located next to the airport terminal were razed by a truck-bomb explosion last month.
Last year, Mali's government signed a peace deal with secular armed groups, but fighters pledging allegiance to both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group have fought on and launched dozens of attacks on Western targets in recent months.
In December, a female French aid worker was kidnapped in Gao.
Aljazeera