A picture taken today in Bamako shows the building where special forces troops in Mali killed a suspect in last week's deadly attack on a nightclub in the capital Bamako.  AFP

AFP/Bamako

Malian Special Forces on Friday killed a suspect in last week's deadly attack on a nightclub in the capital, later identified as the flatmate of the heavily-armed gunman who stormed the venue.

Government sources said the accomplice, who died in a raid in a working-class area of Bamako, had been living with the gunman who opened fire in La Terrasse on Saturday, killing a Frenchman, a Belgian and three locals.

The accomplice had personally taken part in the nightclub assault, throwing a grenade from a motorbike in the street outside, security sources said.

"During an operation launched on Friday, one of the perpetrators of the terrorist crime last Saturday was killed. He did not want to surrender," a senior special forces commander told AFP.

Another special forces source told AFP the suspect -- a shaven-headed, light-skinned man from northern Mali -- was killed during a raid on the flat the two men had rented. 

"After cross-checking, we are certain that the man who fired the shots at the La Terrasse bar-restaurant, lived... with his accomplice killed on Friday by our special forces," a defence ministry official told AFP.

A security source described the accomplice as "big and strong, and of a military bearing". 

"They had rented the apartment for three weeks. After the attack, the perpetrator of the shooting never returned to live with his accomplice, killed on Friday," he added.

He said special forces had found weapons and ammunition at the flat, located between the Banankabougou and Sokorodji districts on the outskirts of the city of 1.8 million.

 Explosions

 The head of the agency which rented out the flat to the two men told AFP on condition of anonymity: "They told us that they were Mauritanian, that they were in Bamako for business."

Around a dozen people were arrested in the raid, security sources said, while three special forces personnel were slightly wounded.

The operation marked a dramatic twist almost a week after the nightclub attack, in which eight people -- two of them Swiss nationals -- were wounded.

Sources have spoken of a number of leads, including clues on the getaway vehicle and its driver, but investigators had made no announcements of substantial progress in the hunt for the killers before Friday.

The streets around the two-storey building where the raid took place were blocked off to traffic as curious bystanders gathered in small groups and police surrounded the neighbourhood on Friday morning.

Jean Salif Tigana, a ground floor resident, said he was roused by noises upstairs in the middle of the night.

Thinking at first that someone was at the door, he went outside and saw police in the streets and heard explosions, he said.

Officers found an identity card on the dead accomplice purporting to belong to a man in his early 20s born in the village of Moudakane, near Gao, northern Mali's largest city, sources told AFP.

Al-Murabitoun, a jihadist group run by leading Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, has claimed responsibility for the nightclub assault.

The group said it had struck in response to recent cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, "whom the miscreant West insulted and mocked".