Mali's secular Tuareg rebels and the Islamist militants Ansar Dine have agreed to join forces and create an independent Islamic state in the north of the country, the two factions announced in a joint statement on Saturday.
Almost 400 detainees escaped from a prison in northwest Pakistan early on Sunday after it came under attack by Islamist militants armed with guns and rocket propelled grenades, according to a senior police official.
Clashes between government security forces and al Qaeda militants have now killed hundreds in Yemen. Violence has flared around the town of Lawder, which lies along a highway linking al Qaeda strongholds in the Abyan province. Islamists have exploited the political crisis in the country after President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to hand over power to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi in November 2011.
A bomb blast ripped through a busy market in Baidoa on Monday, killing at least 11 people. The attack was the worst the strategic town has seen since Somali forces freed it from the control of Islamist al Shabaab militants in February.
A spokesman for Tuareg rebel group the MNLA on Friday told FRANCE 24 (video) that it had declared the "independence of Azawad." The rebels on Thursday declared a unilateral ceasefire after claiming to have successfully conquered the area.
A caliphate in West Africa? Doubtful. But François Picard’s panel fears the Islamist push in Mali’s lawless north will only trigger more chaos after a coup in that landlocked West African state.
A caliphate in West Africa? Doubtful. But François Picard’s panel fears the Islamist push in Mali’s lawless north will only trigger more chaos after a coup in that landlocked West African state.
A military coup followed by a rebel advance, capped by crippling economic sanctions have combined to make Mali an ideal abode for Islamist militants of varying stripes.
The arrests of dozens of alleged Islamists and the deportation of several radical preachers in the wake of the Toulouse and Montauban shootings are raising questions. Is Sarkozy playing on fear? What can his rivals say about such a sensitive issue? Meanwhile, a scandal over the financial gifts of the Bettencourt family that controls L'Oréal appears to be getting closer and closer to Nicolas Sarkozy.
With dozens now arrested across France for allegedly planning a terrorist attack, we ask whether President Sarkozy is using the spectre of radical Islam for his own political ends - and how it's gone down with France's Muslim voters.
