Al-Qaeda-linked and warring ethnically based armed groups are committing atrocities in Mali, Human Rights Watch reports.

The watchdog said in a report released on May 8 that fighters from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen and Dozo militia killed 45 people in separate attacks on villages in Central Mali in January. Mali has been plagued by such groups since 2015, but late last year, its transitional government ejected a UN peacekeeping mission.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 5 rejected international pressure to halt the war in Gaza in a fiery speech marking the country’s annual Holocaust memorial day, declaring: “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”

The message, delivered in a setting that typically avoids politics, was aimed at the growing chorus of world leaders who have criticized the heavy toll caused by Israel’s military offensive against Hamas militants and have urged the sides to agree to a cease-fire.

Campus protests by pro-Palestinian activists spread across Europe on May 7 as some called for a break in academic ties with Israel over the war in Gaza, while schools increasingly faced the question under debate in the US: Allow or intervene?

German police broke up a protest by several hundred pro-Palestinian activists who had occupied a courtyard at Berlin’s Free University. Protesters occupied a university building in Amsterdam hours after police detained 169 people at a different campus location. Two remained in custody on suspicion of committing public violence.

A powerful ethnic minority armed group battling Myanmar’s army in the country’s west claimed on May 6 to have taken hundreds of government soldiers prisoner when it captured a major command post.

The Arakan Army, the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement, has been on the offensive against army outposts in the western state of Rakhine—its home ground—for about six months.

Every year on May 3, UNESCO commemorates World Press Freedom Day. It is being marked at a particularly perilous time for journalists globally, with Israel’s war on Gaza becoming the deadliest conflict for journalists and media workers.

At least 107 migrants including women and children have been freed from captivity in a town in southeast Libya, a security force spokesman said on May 6.

Jose Raul Mulino, a stand-in for a former president banned from running, has won the country’s presidential elections.

Authorities unofficially called the race late on May 5 after three of Mulino’s closest competitors conceded defeat. The former security minister, who was a late entrant to the race after his mentor President Ricardo Martinelli was removed from power after being convicted of corruption, secured more than a third of the votes cast in the country of 4.4 million people.

Chad held its long delayed presidential election on May 5 following three years of military rule under the interim president, Mahamat Deby Itno, a vote that analysts widely expected the incumbent to win.

Deby Itno seized power after his father, who spent three decades in power, was killed fighting rebels in 2021. His government announced it was extending the 18-month transition for two more years, which provoked protests across the country.

At least 12 people, including children, have been killed in twin bomb blasts that hit two camps for displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to government officials, the United Nations (UN), and an aid group.

The explosions on May 3 targeted the camps in Lac Vert and Mugunga, near the city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, the UN said in a statement. The attacks, in which at least 20 people were injured, were a “flagrant violation of human rights and international humanitarian law and may constitute a war crime,” it said.