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Nine soldiers have been killed in an attack near the central Malian town of Bandiagara, in an area where armed groups are rampant, a military official has said.
Army and local officials had earlier spoken of a death toll of eight in the attack on a gendarmerie post which took place on Thursday night.
Gunmen killed 36 people in two attacks in northern Nigeria on Wednesday, a day after insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades amid worsening security facing Africa’s most populous nation, officials and residents said.
The series of attacks by armed bandits occurred over the past 48 hours with 18 people killed each in villages of Kaduna and Katsina states and several others injured. The assailants burned down houses, displacing the villagers.
Militants from Nigeria’s oil-rich region have threatened to attack the country’s capital and economic hub for alleged neglect of the Niger-Delta, the nation’s petroleum producing area.
In a video statement Wednesday, Supreme Egbesu Liberation Fighters said they will target Abuja, the federal capital, and Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial city, if the government failed to improve the infrastructure of the Niger-Delta region, southern part of the West African country.
Several civilians, including women and children, were injured in violent clashes in the town of Bambari in the Central African Republic.
In a statement late Monday, Doctors Without Borders said a medical center was hit by bullets and explosives amidst violent clashes in Bambari on Feb. 15 and 16.
The Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and an Italian carabineri police officer were killed on Monday while travelling in the DRC in a UN convoy, the Foreign Ministry said.
In a brief statement, the ministry said Luca Attanasio and the officer, named as Vittorio Iacovacci by the Italian government, were killed in Goma. They were traveling in a convoy of the UN stabilisation mission in the country.