Protests continued for a second week in Morocco's neglected Rif region, and spread to cities throughout the country—bringing together Arabs and Berbers to demand democratic reform.
Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi, was released from prison under a new amnesty law, according to the militia that has held him for the past five years.
Protests spread across Morocco as thousands demonstrated solidarity with activists who took to the streets in the fishing port of al-Hoceima and were met with mass arrests.
Egyptian warplanes carried out air-strikes on what President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi called six "terrorist training camps" in Libya after a new massacre of Coptic Christians.
Up to 130 soldiers are reported to have been summarily executed after a force loyal to Libya's Tripoli-based government took an airbase controlled by eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar.
Thousands of Tunisians marched to protest a bill that would grant amnesty to officials facing charges of corruption committed under the previous regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
Libya's Constitution Drafting Assembly is under harsh critcism from women's rights advocates, while Berber leaders have called for a boycott to press demands on language rights.
A new Qaeda-affiliated faction, the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), is attempting to re-unify the fragmented jihadist insurgency in Mali's desert north.
The International Organization for Migration reports that its staff have documented "slave markets" on North African migrant routes, preying on young African men bound for Libya.
A Tunisian court sentenced British DJ Dax J to a year in prison for "offending public morality" after the artist played a remix of the Muslim call to prayer in a nightclub.
The US military plans to station ground troops in Libya to help local forces fight the ISIS faction there, and also seeks greater scope to target insurgents in Somalia.
Human Rights Watch accused the Libyan National Army—actually controlled by the unrecognized government in the country's east—of committing war crimes in Benghazi.
