Libya

The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) said it had documented 647 civilian casualties since last April, when Khalifa Haftar's offensive on Tripoli began.

Report names five Sudanese and four Chadian armed groups it says contributed combatants to Libya's civil war.

At a recent conference on the situation in Libya, a speaker declared that all parties involved agree that political decentralization is the way forward in the country. This is largely true, except that none of the militia coalitions currently vying for power has articulated the slightest interest in the idea. The same goes for all of the other ideas for resolving the conflict, such as floating the currency to minimize letter of credit fraud, and eliminating fuel subsidies to curtail rampant smuggling and profiteering by armed groups.

UN-recognised government blames renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar's forces for attacking residential areas.

The United Nations Security Council called on all countries on Monday to implement an arms embargo on Libya and to stay out of the conflict after U.N. sanctions monitors accused Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey of repeated violations.

US officials met with eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar as Washington presses him to end his offensive on the capital, the US State Department said.

Libya's renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar has declared a "no-fly zone" in the skies over the capital, Tripoli, drawing a warning from the country's internationally-recognised government.

Fears that Russian mercenaries, unofficially backed by Moscow, are tipping the scales in Libya in favour of the military leader Khalifa Haftar appears to have prompted the US to issue a strong warning to the general to pull back.

The attack on a military outpost near Mali’s border with Niger in which 53 soldiers and one civilian were killed on November 2, exemplifies the resilience of the Islamic State (IS) across countries in Africa. It also sends a message that IS, despite losing its founder and some of its top commanders in the Middle East last month, still has fighters loyal to its cause and has strengthened.

In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, a gold boom is attracting the attention of diverse armed groups. Security forces are struggling to control gold mining zones in regions that the state has neglected or abandoned. Artisanal gold mining provides armed groups, in some cases including jihadists, with a new source of funding and potentially even recruits. If left unregulated, it risks fuelling violence in the region.