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Suspected Islamist militants attacked a hotel in central Mali used by United Nations staff today, killing at least five people and exchanging fire with troops encircling the building, residents and military sources said. Malian military officials also said three Russian pilots were believed to have been kidnapped during the attack, though the Russian embassy in Mali, speaking to the TASS press agency, denied this. The attack well south of the Saharan desert strongholds of Islamist militants highlights the threat posed by remnants of an Al Qaeda-linked insurgency that appears to be stepping up its campaign against Malian and UN troops....

The world’s three most infamous terrorist organizations are working together at Al-Qaeda-run training camps in the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, where dozens of recruits from the U.S., Canada and Europe are being indoctrinated into violent jihad and training for attacks that could expand the so-called caliphate across North and West Africa, according to analysts. ISIS, Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda all have links to two camps in the remote sands of the expansive North African country, according to Veryan Khan, editorial director for the Florida-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, which tracks international terrorism and had a source on the ground...

A pair of RAF Lakenheath based USAF F-15E Strike Eagles that were bristling with live bombs and air-to-air missiles, along five KC-135R tankers, flew on a secretive and grueling 12 hour mission over the Southern Mediterranean on Monday, May 25th, Memorial Day. Multiple radio interceptors and plane spotters state that four F-15E’s, callsigns ABLE 01 through 04, took off from their home base at RAF Lakenheath laden with yellow banded (live) AIM-9M sidewinders, AIM-120 AMRAAMS and no less than seven 500lb Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). These aircraft were accompanied by five KC-135Rs tankers, callsign QUID 91 through 95, that...

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Moscow on Monday where the issue of Middle East peace talks will be raised, Russian authorities announced Thursday. “The two leaders will hold talks concerning key aspects of Russian-Palestinian relations and their future, with particular attention on the trade, economy and humanitarian sectors,” the Kremlin said in a statement according to AFP. There will also be “an exchange of ideas on the process of Israeli-Palestinian talks and other problematic regional situations,” the statement continued, adding that North Africa would also be on the agenda. …

Jihadists decapitate Malian accused of informing for French armyBamako (AFP) - Militants from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) decapitated a Malian this week that they accused of aiding France's anti-jihadist operation in the region, security sources said Saturday. "A Malian civilian accused of collaborating with French forces in the Barkhane operation was executed and decapitated by AQIM this week," a military source with the United Nations' MINUSMA mission in Mali said of Thursday's killing in the marketplace in Tichift, 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Timbuktu.

Mrs Yattara leads me to her boss, Mr Kante. He has an office all to himself, and offers me a seat... a seat from which I can hardly see him. Tax rule books and copies of Finance Ministry decrees are piled into turrets all around his desk. He asks me questions about my expenses as a freelance journalist. It's unnerving because he is writing things down but I can't see what. Mr Kante ''You have the choice between two income tax regimens, 30% or 3%, which shall it be?'' ''Oh well... err 3%?'' I venture. ''Three per cent it is,"...

Four people, including French and Belgian nationals, have been shot dead in a restaurant on a busy street in the Malian capital Bamak. Witnesses said they saw four people running away and shouting "God is Great" in Arabic ("Allahu Akbar") as they fired machine guns and throw a grenade at La Terrace in Bamako's lively Hippodrome district following the attack shortly after midnight. "This is a terrorist attack, although we're waiting for clarification. Provisionally, there are four dead - one French national, a Belgian and two Malians," a policeman told AFP, adding that the dead included a police officer passing...

snip The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam. Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic...

'A Muslim shop worker has told how he saved "15 to 20" customers at a Jewish supermarket attacked by terrorist Amedy Coulibaly. Lassana Bathily was out of the gunman's view when he stormed the Hypercacher store in eastern Paris with guns blazing. A number of shoppers fled down stairs at the back of the shop, where they ran into the 24-year-old assistant, who thought the group could hide in a cold storage room in the basement. He has been credited with helping the hostages - including a father and his young son - to survive the siege, in which four...

PARIS (AP) — At a kosher supermarket in Paris, a quick-thinking Muslim employee hides several Jewish shoppers in the basement before sneaking out to brief police on the hostage-taker upstairs. In the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, a poker-faced businessman fools a pair of gunmen into believing they're alone in the building before being allowed to leave unharmed. In the days after the bloody end of twin French hostage crises Friday, stories of life-saving courage are beginning to filter out. One of the most striking is the story of Lassana Bathily, a young immigrant from Mali who literally provided police with the...

French forces in Mali kill Islamist on U.S. wanted list PARIS Thu Dec 11, 2014 7:20am EST (Reuters) - French forces in northern Mali have killed a senior commander of the al Mourabitoun Islamist group who was wanted by the United States, a defense ministry spokesman said on Thursday. The United States has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Ahmed al Tilemsi, who took part in the 2011 kidnapping of two French nationals in Niger and of three aid workers in Algeria later that year. Al Tilemsi was a founding member of the...

New Ebola case confirmed, 2 more suspected November 22, 2014 15:30 GMT BAMAKO, Mali (AP) -- Mali has confirmed a new case of Ebola and says two more suspected patients are being tested, raising concern about a further spread of the disease which has already killed at least five people in the country. The patient who tested positive "was placed in an isolation center for intensive treatment," according to a government statement. It says officials are monitoring 310 people to limit the spread of the disease. Mali's five confirmed Ebola deaths are linked to a 70-year-old imam who was...

A Brooklyn man, who recently returned from West Africa, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital with Ebola-like symptoms Thursday, police sources said. The man, whose name is being withheld by The Post, returned from Mali on Nov. 14, and came down with flu-like symptoms which are similar symptoms to those exhibited by patients suffering from Ebola, the sources said.

Fearful of a surge of Ebola cases, Mali placed more than 440 people under surveillance as a US hospital said Monday it had been unable to save the life of a doctor airlifted from Sierra Leone. Officials in Mali met to consider increasing security at its border following two confirmed cases of Ebola due to infection in neighboring Guinea. US airports also announced plans to begin enhanced screening of travelers from the west African nation. Mali has been scrambling to prevent a minor outbreak from turning into a major crisis after the deaths of a Guinean imam and the Malian...

Malian authorities on Wednesday reported three deaths believed to be linked to a new Ebola cluster, an alarming setback as Mali tries to limit the epidemic ravaging other West African countries. Health officials began monitoring dozens of hospital employees and family members, and also searched this capital city of about 2 million for those who helped prepare the body of one of the victims for burial before it was known that the corpse might be highly contagious. SNIP-- A nurse working at a clinic in the capital died Tuesday, and tests later showed she had Ebola, Communications Minister Mahamadou Camara...

The West African nation of Mali, which just beat its first outbreak of Ebola, has confirmed a second one that is larger and more threatening, global health authorities said on Wednesday. The victim who apparently began the new outbreak was an imam who fell ill in Guinea and traveled to Mali for better treatment at a major private clinic in Bamako, the capital. The new cases will add to the mounting total of Ebola victims. In its last update on Nov. 5, the World Health Organization said there had been more than 13,000 confirmed or suspected cases in West Africa...

Mali has suffered a new case of Ebola infection – separate from its only other one detected last month – with the death of a nurse who treated a patient from Guinea, medical sources said late Tuesday. "The nurse, who had been in contact with a Guinean national who died of the illness, died in turn," said official at the Pasteur Clinic in the capital Bamako, where the male nurse worked.

Mali confirms new case of Ebola, locks down Bamako clinic(Reuters) - The government of Mali confirmed the country's second case of Ebola late on Tuesday and police deployed outside a clinic in the capital, Bamako, that authorities said had been quarantined. In a statement via Twitter, Mali's Information Minister Mahamadou Camara said "prevention measures" were being taken, but gave no details on the case. Local officials and diplomats said the new case was unrelated to the first one last month.

<p>A 2-year-old girl in Mali has been diagnosed with Ebola, making her the West African country's first confirmed case, health officials said Thursday.</p> <p>The girl was brought to Mali from neighboring Guinea, where the outbreak this year is believed to have started, World Health Organization spokeswoman Yvette Bivigou said.</p>

KAYES, Mali (AP) — After 2-year-old Fanta Kone's father died in southern Guinea, the toddler's grandmother took her from the forested hills where the Ebola outbreak first began months ago to bring her home to Mali. It wasn't long, though, before the little girl started getting nosebleeds. By the time the pair made their way back more than 600 miles to the heat-baked town of Kayes several days later, the toddler had a high fever and was vomiting blood. Doctors swiftly diagnosed Fanta with Ebola, but she soon succumbed to the virus already blamed for killing nearly 5,000 people in...