"We are concerned about the attack, because that is our clear market Gao for security reasons," said a high-ranking officer, reported AFP.
Traders packed up their belongings and left the Washington Market, which is near the central police station that was used as a base by armed militants to launch guerrilla attacks into the city on Sunday.
France-attack helicopters destroyed a police station in an attack on Monday morning.
The surrounding area is closed by the security forces and the army of France clears mines in the area.
Sporadic gun shots shots were heard in the northern part of the city.
Some medical sources and the military said at least two hard-line militants and three civilians were killed in the fighting Sunday, and 17 others injured.
"We received 15 patients with gunshot wounds, all of them civilians," said Fatoumata Kanté Doctor in the emergency room.
Two soldiers were lightly injured, said a Malian officer.
Oneness and Jihad movement in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the groups that dominate northern Mali before being driven off by the intervention of France that was launched on 11 January, claimed responsibility for the attack in the city and threatened to launch more attacks.
France-led forces recaptured Gao on 26 January from Al Qaida linked militants who ruled the region of northern Mali for 10 months after a military coup.
France, which is working with the military of Mali, on January 11, launched operation when militants threaten advanced to the capital of Mali, Bamako, after months of doubt about the African intervention forces to help drive out hard-line groups from the northern region.
Mali, who had become one of stable democracies in Africa, experienced the uncertainty after the coup d ' état in March 2012 overthrow the Government of President Amadou Toumani Toure.
The international community is worried that country will become the new hotbed of terrorists and they support the efforts of Africa to intervene militarily.
The United Nations has approved the placement of the African intervention force consisting of about 3300 soldiers under the auspices of the ECOWAS grouping of West African States. With the involvement of Chad, which has pledged 2,000 soldiers, means the number of intervention forces that would be much greater.
Hard-line groups, which said the experts acting under the umbrella of Al Qaida in Islamic Morocco (AQIM), dominate the North, Mali to the extent greater than that of France, since April last year.
Tribal rebels in mid-January 2012 launched more war decades for the independence of the Tuareg in the northern region they claim as their land, reinforced by heavily armed guerrillas who recently returned from Libya. However, their struggle was then hijacked by hard-line muslim groups.
Disgruntled army coup in March meant to give the military more authority in order to quell a revolt in the North, but it in fact backfire and the rebels took control of three major cities in the North of Mali within three days. (M014)
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