A summit of Western African leaders has called for a national unity government to end the political crisis gripping Mali since a military coup in March. The regional bloc, Ecowas, also urged Mali to request international military intervention to win back the country's rebel-held north. The area was seized by Islamist and Tuareg rebels after the March coup.

Abdramane Keita, managing editor of privately-owned bi-weekly L’Aurore newspaper was on the night of 2 July 2012 violently attacked by unknown armed men in the capital Bamako, accusing him of causing confusion in the country. The Media Foundation for West Africa’s (MFWA) correspondent reported that Keita’s assailants abducted him the same night and abandoned him at Senou, a town located in Bamako after seizing all his possessions including an unspecified amount of money.

Six west African leaders have called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate 'war crimes' in northern Mali, in a statement issued at the end of a summit on the crisis there. Over the past week, armed Islamist fighters have descended on cemeteries holding the remains of Timbuktu's Sufi saints, systematically destroying its six most famous tombs, in actions decribed by the ICC as possible war crimes.

The international community on Tuesday 3 July weighed options to help embattled Mali save its north from Islamist fighters who have smashed ancient shrines in Timbuktu and rigged another city with landmines. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc says it has 3,300 troops ready to enter Mali, whose vast north has been occupied by armed rebels for three months after a 22 March coup plunged the nation into chaos.

Touareg rebels in northern Mali entered into talks with regional mediators for the first time last week, expressing a willingness to engage in dialogue with the international community. A delegation from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) led by Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Assaleh met Burkinabe President and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) mediator Blaise Compaoré for the first time on Saturday (9 June) in Ouagadougou.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the slow death of freedom of information in Mali. 'In the past few days, a newspaper editor has been arrested for the second time in a month, soldiers raided a TV station to prevent it from broadcasting an interview with a Tuarag chief, and a French journalist was prevented from travelling to the breakaway north,' says RSF.

Two rebel groups that seized northern Mali two months ago have clashed following protests in the town of Kidal, witnesses say. A source told the BBC that fighting broke out between Tuareg MNLA rebels and the Ansar Dine Islamist group on the third day of protests in the town. Last month, the two groups agreed to merge and turn their vast northern territory into an Islamist state.

While both African and European leaders continue to warn against partition in Mali, the rival movements backing a new, independent state in the north of the country have failed to follow through on a joint agreement to form the Islamic Republic of Azawad, leaving the project uncertain and raising suspicions that their show of unity masked deep divisions. The Tuareg-dominated National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) was reported to have signed an agreement with the Islamic Ansar Dine movement in the northern city of Gao on 25 May. But in the days that followed, contradictory briefings, interviews and communiqués from both sides have suggested the document prepared after three weeks of talks was at best preliminary, with disagreements resurfacing as a final communiqué was worked on.

France is not ruling out military intervention in Mali, but the former colonial power says that would only be in the context of a UN Security Council resolution. That was the gist of the message newly-elected French President François Hollande put across at a joint press conference with Benin’s President Boni Yayi following a closed-door meeting in Paris. Boni Yayi is the first African president to be received at the Elysée Palace since the election of Hollande.

In an interview on the Panos website, a woman talks about learning from the radio that women’s rights violations are happening in the regions the rebels are occupying in the north. 'Since the cities of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal have come under the rebels’ control many women and girls are reported to have been raped. The national radio station announced that in Gao some women died trying to give birth as the city’s hospital has been destroyed.'

West African bloc Ecowas on Monday 28 May rejected a rebel declaration of an independent Islamic state in northern Mali and repeated an earlier threat to take 'all necessary measures' to keep the country intact. The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States 'denounces in the strongest possible terms this opportunistic act', said a statement signed by Ecowas head Desire Kadre Ouedraogo.

Mali's embattled transitional government has rejected the declaration by an alliance of northern rebels of an independent Islamic Tuareg state. 'The government of Mali categorically rejects the idea of the creation of an Azawad state, even more so of an Islamic state,' a government official told the AFP news agency on Sunday. 'Even though this state creation is just on paper and not de facto, we are coming forward to stress that Mali is secular and will remain secular,' said Hamadoun Toure, information minister in the transitional Malian administration. The two groups that seized control of Mali's north had announced that they agreed to merge and create an independent state in the northern half of the west African nation.

The attack on Mali's president Diancounda Traore by angry protesters puts the post-coup transition in the West African country in danger, the UN says. The diplomatic efforts by the west African bloc Ecowas to convince the leaders of the March coup to accept Traore’s 12-month transition have been 'put seriously in danger by these latest developments [and] maybe other options will now have to be considered,' France’s UN ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters in Abidjan.

Is the authority of the UN and regional bodies divine, such that it cannot be challenged by the Somali people? The only ‘crime’ the Somali democratic movement has committed is to dare dream of freedom in the land of its birth.

Journalists in Mali are accusing the military authorities of illegally tapping their telephones as a means of silencing critical opinion in the country. The accusation followed the arrest and subsequent detention of Birama Fall, managing editor of Le Prétoire, a privately-owned Bamako-based bi-weekly newspaper on May 12, 2012. The authorities had illegally listened to Fall’s phone conversation with a former government minister over civilian deaths during the recent counter coup attempt. Fall was, however, released after two hours without charge.

A Somaliland military court has sentenced 17 people to death and jailed five others for life following what it said was their role in attacking an army base. The ruling by the court sitting in Hargeisa, some 1,500 kilometres northwest of Mogadishu were immediately seen as harsh and raised concerns over its impartiality given the speedy delivery and absence of independent lawyers for those charged.

This Amnesty International report looks at the crisis in Mali over the last five months. 'Since the beginning of 2012, Mali has been faced with the worst crisis of its recent history, one that has questioned both the integrity of its territory as well as almost 20 years of political stability. A Tuareg rebellion, fueled by fighters arriving from Libya after the fall of Mouammar Gaddafi, launched attacks against the Malian garrisons in the North of the country in early January 2012. The armed groups also committed serious infringements of international humanitarian law by executing the soldiers they caught in combat. The Malian army responded by bombing indiscriminately the civilian population.'

Amnesty International has accused armed Tuaregs and groups fighting to impose Sharia law in northern Mali of carrying out grave rights abuses such as rape, murder and using child soldiers. A report released by the London-based rights group said government soldiers had also carried out extrajudicial killings, branding the crisis Mali's worst human rights situation in 50 years.

Ghana-based sub-regional press freedom body Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has said that some students in Mali ransacked a private radio station, 'Radio Kayira', destroyed broadcasting equipment worth about FCFA 18 million approximately (US$3,571,950), and stole more than FCFA 2 million (about US$398,556) in cash.

Farima Samake, a widow living in the village of Gwelekoro in the south of Mali, regrets obeying her husband when he took their first daughter out of school to take care of her younger brother. 'Her father decided it and I didn’t refuse,' says Farima. 'Now she is married in another village not far from here. I think our decision has been an injury to her because if she had studied her life could have been different.' Farima didn’t oppose the decision because the law dictates that a woman must obey her husband. 'In all the villages of this region, girls get married at 15 or 16, even if they go to school,' she says. 'Their parents must ask the husband to let their daughter attend school once she is married.'