Tuareg

Grammy-winning band Tinariwen, a collective of Tuareg musicians hailing from the Sahara region of northern Mali, will perform at the Lycabettus Theater in Athens on September 19.

AGADEZ, Niger — The bus station in Agadez, a remote city of low mud-brick buildings in the West African nation of Niger, is buzzing again.

At the edge of an oasis almost engulfed by the dunes, where the rare caravan still passes, is a desert landscape punctured by holes.

The salt pans of Kalala, near Bilma in northeastern Niger, were once an essential stop for traders with their swaying lines of camels.

AFP - At least 36 people have died in flooding in Niger since the start of the rainy season in June, most of them in northern desert areas, UN figures showed Tuesday.

Over that period, the floods have affected a total of 130,468 people, destroying 7,212 homes, 8,162 hectares of crops and 31,118 head of cattle, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

Three Turkish workers who were kidnapped in Ubari, Libya in November 2017 have been freed after 233 days of captivity, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on June 24, citing Turkish prime ministerial sources. 

Two United Nations peacekeepers and a civilian contractor were killed on Nov. 28 in a rocket attack on a U.N. base in northern Mali claimed by the jihadist Ansar Dine group, which the Security Council warned could be a war crime.

Al-Qaeda's North Africa arm has claimed responsibility for two attacks against the United Nation's MINUSMA peacekeeping mission in Mali this week, the Mauritanian Al-Akhbar news agency reported May 31. 

A peacekeeper and two children died on March 8 as militants shelled a UN base in northern Mali, heightening security fears as police hunted jihadists who launched a deadly Bamako nightclub assault.
      
The UN's MINUSMA force said more than 30 rockets were fired at its barracks in the rebel stronghold of Kidal from 5:40 am (0540 GMT).
      

Police in Mali March 8 hunted for the killers of two Europeans and three Malians in a jihadist attack on a nightclub, as a deadly assault on a UN barracks in the north heightened security concerns.
      

At least three people were killed when unknown attackers fired rockets at a UN base on the outskirts of the town of Kidal in northern Mali, international newswires reported.

The attack that took place before dawn on Sunday comes a day after assailants armed with machine guns and grenades attacked a nightclub in Mali's capital Bamako, killing five people.