BAMAKO: Mali lifted a nearly six-month state of emergency yesterday, the eve of the start of a presidential election campaign for July 28 polls in the troubled west African nation, the security ministry said.

The removal of the state of emergency marks a gradual return to normality in Mali, a once stable democracy emerging from some 18 months of political crisis and conflict.

The decree enforcing a curfew and forbidding public gatherings was put in place on Jan. 12, a day after France launched a surprise intervention to help Mali’s weak army drive out Islamists occupying its north for nine months.

The move by Mali’s former colonial power came as Al Qaeda-linked Islamists holding key towns in the vast arid north pushed further south toward the capital Bamako.