African Union has lashed the EU for saying it will pay Burundian peacekeepers in Somalia directly, rather than through their government, ostensibly to prevent the money being diverted to the regime in Bujumbura.
Somalia's al Shabaab Islamist militant group attacked a military base of Ethiopian soldiers serving with an African Union force on Thursday, with both sides saying they had inflicted a heavy toll on their opponents.
Gunmen suspected of belonging to Somalia's Islamist al Shabaab group shot and killed a female journalist working for state-run radio on Sunday, police said.
Amnesty International on Wednesday condemned countries in southern Africa for treating anti-government activists as "criminals" while hosting leaders accused of genocide such as Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
South Sudan government troops killed some 50 people by stuffing them into a shipping container in baking heat, ceasefire monitors have said in a report noting the latest atrocities in two years of war.
UN Security Council ambassadors and African Union leaders met Saturday for crisis talks on Burundi, after the government refused a proposed AU force to stem violence in the troubled country.
Fighters from Somali militant group al Shabaab rammed a suicide car bomb into the gates of an African Union base in Somalia and fought their way inside early on Friday, the group and the Somali army said, and fighting was still going on.
Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza said on Wednesday that Burundians would fight against any peacekeepers sent into the country by the African Union, in his first public response to the AU's plan to deal with an escalating political crisis.
