Jihadist forces upon fleeing Timbuktu for the desert torched the Ahmed Baba Institute—a library housing a priceless collection of centuries-old Islamic manuscripts.
In a mission slated to last two weeks, US Air Force C-17 transport planes are ferrying troops and material from France to Mali for the offensive against jihadist rebels.
Malian security forces have killed civilians, targeting ethnic groups associated with rebels in the north, particularly Tuaregs and Arabs, Human Rights Watch charges.
Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of Libya's deposed leader, appeared in court in Zintan, Libya—despite his protestations that he can only receive impartial justice before the ICC.
Algerian military forces attacked the Amenas gas complex in the interior Sahara, where a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb took dozens of hostages.
With French troops fighting on the ground in Mali, jihadist militias advance on the capital, while Tuareg rebels pledge to re-establish a separatist state in the north.
France carried out air-strikes against Islamist rebels in Mali, helping government forces halt a drive southward by the militants who control the country’s desert north.
A Tunisian court unconditionally released Ali Harzi, the only suspect held in custody over the deadly attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi.
Two Egyptians were killed and two injured in an explosion at a Coptic church at Dafniya, near the Libyan city of Misrata. The blast came just as mass was ending.
Islamist militants in Timbuktu destroyed more Sufi shrines days after the UN Security Council approved an intervention force to retake Mali’s breakaway north.
The Libyan government closed the country’s southern borders and declared the southern provinces a military zone in response to growing lawlessness.
As Mali’s prime minister is removed by the junta, Ansar Dine rebels are embraced in peace talksāwhile the MUJAO rebels are sanctioned by the UN as an al-Qaeda front.
