- Al-Qaeda’s North African wing has released a French hostage abducted in Mali and held for three months. He arrived in the capital Bamako on Wednesday, hours after his release.
His release follows an agreement between Malian government and his captors that demanded the release of four Al Qaeda rebels earlier this week.
The released Islamist militants, including two Algerians and a Mauritanian sparked a row between Mali and its neighbours Algeria and Mauritania prompting both countries to withdraw their ambassadors in the country.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM, had threatened to kill the Frenchman unless Mali released the four militants who had been in possession of automatic weapons and a rocket launcher when they were arrested last year.
AQIM is still holding five other western hostages: an Italian couple abducted in December in Mauritania and three Spanish aid workers who were also taken in Mauritania.
Last year it executed a British captive after London refused to release a radical Jordanian cleric.
Largely comprised of Algerians, AQIM operates in the vast borderless Saharan territories of southern Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger, exploiting the absence of state control.
The group is the latest reincarnation of a militant organisation born in the civil war, which gripped Algeria in the 1990s.
afrol News - It is called "financial inclusion", and it is a key government policy in Rwanda. The goal is that, by 2020, 90 percent of the population is to have and actively use bank accounts. And in only four years, financial inclusion has doubled in Rwanda.
afrol News - The UN's humanitarian agencies now warn about a devastating famine in Sudan and especially in South Sudan, where the situation is said to be "imploding". Relief officials are appealing to donors to urgently fund life-saving activities in the two countries.
afrol News - Fear is spreading all over West Africa after the health ministry in Guinea confirmed the first Ebola outbreak in this part of Africa. According to official numbers, at least 86 are infected and 59 are dead as a result of this very contagious disease.
afrol News - It is already a crime being homosexual in Ethiopia, but parliament is now making sure the anti-gay laws will be applied in practical life. No pardoning of gays will be allowed in future, but activist fear this only is a signal of further repression being prepared.
afrol News / Africa Renewal - Ethiopia's ambitious plan to build a US$ 4.2 billion dam in the Benishangul-Gumuz region, 40 km from its border with Sudan, is expected to provide 6,000 megawatts of electricity, enough for its population plus some excess it can sell to neighbouring countries.
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