A senior Japanese official met Algeria's prime minister on Wednesday to press for an explanation of the gas plant siege, as Tokyo confirmed the deaths of two more nationals, taking its toll to nine.

Senior Vice Foreign Minister Shunichi Suzuki arrived aboard a government jet that is to repatriate the bodies of those known to have been killed in the hostage crisis, along with the seven Japanese who survived.

Japan said Wednesday it would close its Malian embassy over growing security fears amid a French-led assault against Islamists which has raised concerns of a backlash against ethnic Arabs and Tuaregs.

French and Malian troops were due to sweep the outskirts of towns recently recaptured from the Al-Qaida-linked rebels for landmines they suspect the extremists left as they fled an air and ground assault by the armies.

French air raids on the fabled Malian city of Timbuktu destroyed a mansion belonging to Libya's former strongman Moammar Gadhafi which was being used by Islamist radicals as their headquarters, officials said.

French planes bombed a major base of the al-Qaida in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) near Timbuktu, a French defense ministry official confirmed on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. The last raids took place on Sunday night.

The U.S. military has started airlifting French troops and equipment into Mali to assist their operation against al-Qaida-linked Islamist rebels, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said Tuesday.

"At the request of the French government, we have begun flying equipment and personnel from France to Mali," an AFRICOM spokesman, Chuck Prichard, told Agence France Presse.

Algerian authorities were searching on Tuesday for five foreigners still missing from a bloody hostage crisis at the In Amenas gas plant, which was slowly being brought back on stream, a security source said.

"Still no news about the five missing foreigners," the source told AFP, after the final assault launched by Algerian special forces on Saturday against the Islamist militants who seized hundreds of hostages when they overran the plant.

Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi told fellow Arab leaders meeting in Riyadh on Monday that he opposes French-led military action in Mali against Islamist rebels.

"We do not accept at all the military intervention in Mali because that will fuel conflict in the region," Morsi said at the opening of an economic summit in the Saudi capital.

The backing President Francois Hollande got at home for his military intervention in Mali was under increasing strain Monday as the opposition lamented that France was isolated and acting without clear objectives.

"The isolation of France is a major problem, it is the central question," said Jean-Francois Cope, the leader of the right-wing UMP party.

Algiers said on Monday that 37 foreigners of eight different nationalities, as well as an Algerian, were killed by hostage-takers in a well-planned attack on a remote gas plant.

Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said five other foreigners were still missing and that several of the hostages had been executed "with a bullet to the head" as the four-day crisis ended in a bloodbath on Saturday.

The European Union offered Monday to host talks on the Mali crisis on February 5 in Brussels and said it had activated a logistical "clearing house" to back up an African-led military force in Mali.

"We have offered to host on February 5 a ministerial meeting of the international support and follow-up group on the situation in Mali," said a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

French and Malian troops have recaptured the Malian towns of Diabaly and Douentza from Islamist fighters, France's defense minister said Monday.

After heavy fighting in Diabaly over the past week there was uncertainty over whether the Islamists had fled, but French and Malian troops met no resistance when they earlier Monday entered the town.