Jihadist Insurgency

The three - members of the National Guard, a unit of the Malian armed forces - had been travelling between Koro and Mondoro, near the border with Burkina Faso, two sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

After two days of meetings with Malian political and civil-society figures, the mediator for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), former Nigerian president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, said he had no doubt that Mali’s post-coup interim administration would hand over power to civilians within the agreed 18-month deadline.

Burkina Faso’s President Roch Marc Christian Kabore has won a second term after gaining an outright majority in the first round of elections, the country’s electoral board announced Thursday.

The people of Burkina Faso began voting in a general election Sunday in the shadow of a growing jihadist insurgency, and with opposition candidates warning of a “massive fraud” at the polls.

Burkina Faso will vote in a general election Sunday in the shadow of a growing jihadist insurgency, with President Roch Marc Christian Kabore expected to win re-election.

A court in Mali’s capital Bamako sentenced an Islamist militant leader and 14 other people to death on Friday for jihadist activity in the south of the war-torn Sahel state.

Seven soldiers were killed and others wounded or missing after their patrol was ambushed in northern Burkina Faso, the centre of a five-year-old jihadist insurgency, security sources said on Thursday.

The hostage, Philip Walton, described as the son of a missionary living in Niger, was abducted Monday night by six men armed with Kalashnikovs on the outskirts of Massalata, a village about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the border with Nigeria.

Mali’s ex-president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita returned to the Sahel state Wednesday, an official said, after leaving to seek medical treatment following his ouster in an August coup.

The West African bloc ECOWAS will likely decide on Friday whether to lift potentially crippling sanctions imposed on Mali after last month’s coup, its mediator said.

Mali’s military junta leader, Colonel Assimi Goita, on Tuesday, demanded an end to potentially crippling economic sanctions imposed after last month’s coup in the poor Sahel state.

A West African delegation visiting Mali to push for a speedy return to civilian rule following a coup said it was "very hopeful" on Saturday after meeting with the country's military junta and the president it ousted.

Soldiers who staged a military coup in Mali leading to the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and his government said on Wednesday they plan to form a civilian transitional government that will organise fresh elections.

The truce-seeking trip of President Muhammadu Buhari to the Malian capital of Bamako on Thursday ended without a deal to soothe the country’s escalating political crisis.

At least two soldiers were killed and five injured in an attack Monday in eastern Burkina Faso near the border with Niger, security sources said.

A vigilante self-defence militia was behind for this month’s massacre of 43 people in three Fulani villages in northern Burkina Faso, according to testimonies collected by Amnesty International.

Benin-based Pastor Solomon Folorunsho, who said he is on a self-proclaimed mission to help humanity, creating the International Christian Centre for Missions (ICCM), is facing accusations of physically and sexually abusing children seeking refuge in his church’s camp.

Malian troops backed by foreign allies on Wednesday launched a hunt for scores of soldiers listed as missing after one of the deadliest attacks in a seven-year-old jihadist insurgency.