A special summit of West African leaders held in Dakar, Senegal, agreed to dispatch a regional force to Mali if the interim government officially makes the request. 'The conference instructed the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) to prepare the standby force for immediate deployment as soon as Mali asks for it,' a statement issued at the meeting said.

The Kenyan security forces have committed widespread human rights abuses against ethnic Somalis with total impunity, Human Rights Watch said in a report. Between November 2011 and March 2012, Kenyan police and soldiers arbitrarily arrested and mistreated Kenyan citizens and Somali refugees in North Eastern province in response to attacks by militants suspected of links to Somalia’s Islamist armed movement al-Shabaab.

Fourteen persons, half of them civilians, died in Mali when they were hit by stray bullets following the eruption of violent clashes between troops loyal to the coup plotters and those still supporting the ousted President Toumani Toure, PANA learnt from official sources. In a statement, the Committee for the recovery of democracy and the restoration of the state (CNRDRE), the military junta that ousted Toure in a coup on 22 March, accused 'the intruders' of attacking the Kati barracks, the Malian national broadcaster (ORTM) and the international Bamako-Senou airport with a view to destabilizing the process of returning the country to constitutional order.

The captain who led a coup in Mali last month before handing power back to a civilian president has rejected the decision by West African states to send troops, casting a shadow over delicately-balanced negotiations to resolve the country's crisis. 'All the decisions announced in Abidjan were reached without consulting us,' Amadou Haya Sanogo told reporters on Saturday. 'I do not agree with the deployment of soldiers from the Economic Community of West Africa States.'

Algeria is a key player in the Sahel, perhaps now more than ever. The crises in Libya and Mali will likely bolster the geopolitical rent that has benefited the Algerian regime since 11 September 2001.

Community distressed after four of their leaders, including the village chief, are arrested.

The International Criminal Court has warned Mali it is considering investigating reports of killings, rapes and other war crimes it fears may have been committed since January when fighting erupted there, triggering a wider crisis. 'The office has been closely following the developments in Mali since clashes erupted around 17 January 2012,' the ICC prosecutor's office said in a statement, adding it would now decide whether to conduct a preliminary investigation.

Malian scholars, librarians and ordinary citizens in the rebel-occupied city of Timbuktu are hiding away priceless ancient manuscripts to prevent them from being damaged or looted, a South African academic in contact with them said. Cape Town University's Professor Shamil Jeppie said he was in daily contact with curators and private owners safeguarding tens of thousands of historic texts in Timbuktu, the fabled desert trading town and seat of Islamic learning overrun by Tuareg-led rebels on April 1.

Armed men have rounded up top Malian officials including two presidential hopefuls, in a show of force by a junta that seized power last month, as the interim leader named a Microsoft executive as Prime Minister. Those arrested included ex-prime minister Modibo Sidibe and Soumaila Cisse, a former minister who led the West African Economic and Monetary Union until November last year. Cisse suffered an unspecified injury while fleeing his home, and was later arrested at a hospital and taken by ambulance to the junta's headquarters in Kati, near Bamako, his office said.

In conversation with Jessica Horn, a leading Malian women’s rights activist (name supplied but withheld on request) identifies the roots of the crisis in Mali, and the opportunistic use of the crisis by Malian and international Islamic fundamentalists to gain a popular foothold in the north of the country.

The president of Mali, Amadou Toumani Touré, has formally resigned after soldiers ousted him in a coup in March, with power set to be transferred to Mali’s National Assembly after elections later this month. The soldiers say they seized power because of Touré’s alleged mishandling of a rebellion of ethnic Tuareg rebels, who have succeeded in capturing several key northern cities, declaring their independence and now calling for international recognition. Officials claim the rebels are a mix of Tuareg separatists and Islamists with links to al-Qaeda. We speak with Firoze Manji, editor-in-chief of Pambazuka News, a pan-African social justice website. He was formerly the Africa director for Amnesty International. Manji recently co-edited a book called "African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions." Manji argues the political unrest in Mali, Senegal, and beyond is "driven by the fact that over the last 30 years our people have lost all the gains of independence," due in large part to what he calls neoliberal policies imposed on many African countries by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. "People feel that their governments are more accountable to the banks and to the international multinational corporations than they are to their citizens," Manji says.

How can these westerners be so cynical to oblige people they formerly colonised to use their democratic paradigm whilst their countries are grappling with the same model that hides xenophobia, unbridled racism, injustice and misery?

Mali is facing its 'worst humanitarian crisis for 20 years', brought on by a combination of food insecurity affecting around three million, some 93,500 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in northern Mali, whose whereabouts and status is uncertain, and 113,000 refugees who have fled conflict in the north to neighbouring countries. Between 175,000 and 220,000 children will be acutely malnourished this year and access to northern Mali and the refugee destinations across the borders is problematic, all of which is topped off by a perennial lack of real interest in the Sahel.

'Following the events that occurred in the night of March 21, 2012 in Bamako and in the regions, the Forum of Civil Society Organisations of Mali has held a meeting at its headquarters. After analysis and review of the situation, the Forum of Civil Society Organizations condemns, as a principle all forms of coup d'état and acts of violence for the settlement of problems within the Malian nation.'

The heads of state of the countries neighbouring Mali said Tuesday 27 March they want to send a 'strong signal' to the mutinous soldiers who seized power last week, overturning over 20 years of democracy in this African nation. Already, the United States, the European Union and France have cut off aid. Additional sanctions from the region would be a further blow to the junta.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the occupation of the headquarters of the state radio and TV broadcaster ORTM by renegade soldiers since yesterday and the interruption of broadcasting by many other radio and TV stations as a result of an apparent military coup against President Amadou Toumani Touré. 'Whether this is a real coup or just a mutiny, we are appalled that soldiers have occupied the state broadcaster and taken control of its broadcasts,' Reporters Without Borders said. 'As it is often the case in such circumstances, control of news and information is primordial and the media are among the mutineers’ first targets.'

While the future of Mali's hitherto free press is unclear, the Twitter narrative during last week;s coup demonstrated the ways in which traditional media are increasingly less relevant in any case. 'Marking papers, with one ear tuned to RFI. But def got more quality reporting from Twitter today about #Mali than from any other medium,' tweeted Philippe M. Frowd, a MacMaster University doctoral student living in Canada.

Life in the Malian capital Bamako is slowly returning to normal after mutinous soldiers seized power, toppling the democratically elected government of President Ahmed Toumani Toure. Fuel stations and market stalls reopened on Sunday after a decrease in the gunfire and looting that followed Wednesday's (21 March) overnight coup. The military junta that ousted Toure has ordered all soldiers back to barracks, but rebels in the country's north exploiting the coup have been pushing towards three northern towns, the Reuters news agency reported.

The turmoil in northern Mali is thwarting efforts to treat and prevent obstetric fistula, say health experts and local NGO workers. It is just one example of the fallout from the latest fighting between Tuareg rebels and the Malian army, triggered when rebels began attacking northern military posts in January. Since then, some 195,000 people are estimated to have been displaced by fighting, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Authorities in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in Somalia shut down an independent radio broadcaster and arrested the station's director over coverage of fighting between the government and Al-Shabaab militants, local journalists said. Armed police arriving in two vehicles raided Codka Nabadda (Voice of Peace) in the port city of Bossasso, confiscated equipment, and sealed the studios, local journalists told the Committee to Protect Journalists.