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Thousands fled the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Tuesday and the local university was shut after a week of intensified clashes between an Islamist sect and military forces.
The Boko Haram sect, which says it wants a wider application of sharia Islamic law across Africa’s most populous nation, has claimed responsibility for the killings of police officers and attacks with homemade explosives on churches and drinking places in recent months.
Libyan revolutionaries have reportedly planned to launch a major assault on the strategic town of Gharyan near the capital Tripoli as fighting rages in the country between the opposition and Gaddafi forces.
Anti-regime forces reported that the planned attack is aimed at closing off supply routes south of Tripoli, British media reported.
Gharyan is located just 80 kilometers south of Tripoli.
Reports say forces loyal to Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi have organized militia groups in strategic towns surrounding Tripoli.
On Sunday, Gaddafi’s forces launched a counterattack against revolutionary forces southwest of Tripoli near the town of Gualish.
Libyan rebels have launched an offensive in the mountains southwest of the capital, Tripoli, in an effort to move their front lines closer to Tripoli, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s stronghold.
Rebels used heavy arms Wednesday to push into the al-Qawalish area, a government-held position near Tripoli. Witnesses said they could hear NATO warplanes overhead.
Libyan officials are claiming to have intercepted two boats carrying a cache of weapons from Qatar, reportedly intended for rebels fighting forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.
On Monday, Moussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, said 11 rebels were captured from the boats close to shore near the town of Janzour, just west of Tripoli.
Authorities of the African Union mission in Somalia [AMISOM] have confirmed the deployment of nearly 3,000 troops of UPDF into mogadishu, the capital of Somalia on Friday.
AMISOM commanding officer, Fred Ngusha from Uganda told the reporters in Mogadishu late Friday that new reinforcement troops will join estimated 9,000 troops of AMISOM currently battling al-Shabaab rebels.
Sixteen people, including eight women and children, were killed when a Sudanese war plane bombed a village in the Nuba mountains, which for three weeks has been the scene of daily aerial attacks in a new war along the country’s volatile north-south border.
Medical staff at a nearby clinic said the dead included a three-year-old child and an eight-month-old baby. They said another 32 people were wounded in Sunday’s attack, many of them seriously.
Rebels have been engaged in fierce firefights with government forces about 80km (50 miles) south-west of Tripoli and close to their frontline.
A BBC correspondent who was with the rebels said two of them had died in the battle, according to a volunteer medic.
The rebels said government forces suffered far greater casualties, although that cannot be confirmed.
Meanwhile, Col Muammar Gaddafi has agreed to stay out of talks on ending the conflict, African leaders said.