Special Reports

At least 120,000 people are facing starvation in northeastern Nigeria due to a "catastrophic" man-made famine caused by the insurgency of Boko Haram terrorists, the UN-agency Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned. The agency also predicted the crisis was likely to deteriorate between June and August. Borno state, Boko Haram's birthplace and the epicentre of the group's seven-year insurgency, is expected to have around 78,000 people living in famine-like condition

Security has been intense over the last few weeks in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, with police and soldiers on the streets, vehicle searches, and round-ups of alleged Islamist militants. It’s the response to the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) attack in Burkina Faso on 15 January that left 30 people dead. Until the assault on the Cappuccino restaurant and the Splendid Hotel, next door on Ouagadougou’s trendy Kwame Nkrumah Avenue, Burkina Faso, like Senegal, felt saf

Morocco’s rippled sand dunes, sheltered coves and white sand beaches have long lured tourists looking for a taste of the Maghreb without compromising security. The narrow country, which borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, has been hailed for years as a success story in the Arab world and the last safe haven in North Africa. But a surge in Islamic State group supporters is threatening that stability. With a Muslim majority population, high youth unemployment

Tunisia has reopened its border with Libya, 15 days after it shut the frontier following a suicide bombing in Tunis claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, the interior ministry said Friday. "The border with Libya was opened Thursday at midnight," ministry spokesman Walid Louguini told AFP. The crossing points of Ras Jedir and Wazen-Dhehibe were open on Friday amid extra security, according to an AFP journalist. Tunisia ordered that border crossings with its conflict-str

One of the four assassins who took out an employee of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Khartoum, was killed in Somalia by an affiliate of al-Qaeda after pledging allegiance to ISIS, Sudan Tribune has learned. The family of Mohammed Makkawi Ibrahim, who was sentenced to death in the murder of the US diplomat John Granville and his Sudanese driver in 2008, received the news of his demise via an anonymous phone call which mentioned that he was ki

The competing claims by the Macina Liberation Front and Al-Mourabitoun to have carried out Friday's attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako highlight the number of militant Islamic groups flourishing in Mali, a country with a weak central government and vast ungoverned spaces. Most of the groups trace their origins to al-Qaida's North Africa branch, and membership has also been very fluid between them. For the most part, they have not allied themselves with the Islamic Sta

Wily one-eyed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, whose jihadists have claimed an assault on a luxury Mali hotel, shot to global notoriety with a spectacular assault on an Algerian gas field two years ago, but had long been known as "The Uncatchable". US bombers as recently as June were sent out to target the elusive 43-year-old Algerian born and bred in the country's desert hinterland, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said last weekend. Washington has pledged a reward of $5m on hi

Egyptian security forces have arrested Hassan Malik, a leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, security officials said, part of a sustained crackdown on Islamists. “He was arrested in Cairo on charges of funding a group that promotes violence,” said one of the officials. Malik, a businessman, was one of the few prominent Brotherhood members to escape the toughest crackdown on Islamists in Egypt’s modern history. Security forces have killed hundreds of Islamists and a

The Islamic State section in Libya (ISIS) released a video on Sunday purportedly showing the beheading of a man who identified himself as being a citizen of South Sudan. The captive, dressed in dressed in orange jump suit, made a short statement in which he uttered his name but was not audible and confirmed his nationality. The masked ISIS fighter in the video, who carried out the beheading, justified the killing by saying that “this is a message to our Muslim brothers in Sou

At least 70 hotels have closed in Tunisia since September after two deadly jihadist attacks on foreign tourists, and more are expected to follow suit, an industry official said on Sunday. "The situation is very sluggish," Radhouane Ben Salah, the head the Tunisian Federation of Hotels, told private Mosaique FM radio. With reservations at "no more than 20%, 70 hotels had to close since September because the lack of clients and more are expected to do the same," he added. Ben S