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An al-Qaeda linked extremist group claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s suicide attack on a military camp in northern Mali that killed at least 60 soldiers and former rebels and wounded 115.
A car packed with explosives penetrated the camp in Gao as hundreds of soldiers gathered for a morning meeting.
In a landmark move to defend democracy, West African troops Thursday entered the tiny West African nation of Gambia, to oust a president who has refused to cede power after an election defeat.
Senegalese troops entered Gambia hours after the incoming president, Adama Barrow, was sworn into office in neighboring Senegal. His predecessor, Yahya Jammeh, has refused to step down despite intense diplomatic pressure and threats of military intervention by other West African nations.
At least 47 people including five suicide bombers were killed when a vehicle packed with explosives detonated inside a military camp in the northern Mali city of Gao on Wednesday, the government said.
A Reuters reporter who arrived at the camp soon after the blast, which occurred at about 9am (0900 GMT), said he saw dozens of bodies lying on the ground alongside the wounded.
Ambulances rushed to the scene as helicopters circled overhead.
A Nigerian air force fighter jet on a mission against Boko Haram extremists mistakenly bombed a refugee camp on Tuesday, killing more than 100 refugees and aid workers and wounding 200, a government official and doctors said.
At least 46 “severely injured” people remain in a refugee camp that Nigeria’s military says it mistakenly bombed and they need urgent evacuation, the International Committee for the Red Cross said Wednesday.
Some one hundred people fled ongoing battles between the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Burma Army in northern Shan State’s Namhsan Township, arriving in Mandalay on Sunday over concerns for their children’s education.
A high school and a middle school in Namhsan town and three primary schools in nearby villages have shut due to the instability and lack of students, Namhsan Constituency (2) lawmaker Daw Khin Myint Swe told The Irrawaddy.