Captain Ibrahim Traore has been appointed as president of Burkina Faso after Paul-Henri Damiba was removed in the West African country’s second coup in less than nine months.

The Sahel country plunged into political turmoil on September 30 after a group of officers decided to remove Damiba due to his inability to deal with a worsening armed uprising, dissolved the transitional government and suspended the constitution. 

Libya’s Missing Persons Authority announced Sunday the discovery of 42 bodies buried in a mass grave in the central coastal city of Sirte, a former stronghold of the ousted Islamic State group.

In a statement, the authority’s spokesperson said the 42 bodies had been exhumed from a school site in the city following a “tip off” from an investigation conducted with captured Islamic State fighters.

Azerbaijan said it has discovered what it claimed is a mass grave of its soldiers allegedly executed by Armenian separatist forces during the 1990s war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“A mass grave of Azerbaijani servicemen tortured and executed during the first Karabakh war was discovered in the village of Edilli,” Hikmet Hajiyev, the foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, said on Wednesday on Twitter.

Women demonstrated across various cities in Afghanistan after dozens of mostly young women were killed in an attack on a school last week.

Dressed in a long black abaya with her face mask secured, university professor Zahra Mosawi walked the streets of the ancient Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif to denounce incessant attacks on the Shia Muslim minority.

Venezuela freed seven Americans in exchange for the release of two nephews of President Nicholas Maduro’s wife jailed for years by the United States on drug smuggling convictions.

The swap of the Americans on Saturday, including five oil executives held for nearly five years, is the largest trade of detained citizens ever carried out by the Biden administration.

The prisoner swap amounts to a rare gesture of goodwill by Maduro as the socialist leader looks to rebuild relations with the US after vanquishing most of his domestic opponents.

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan have held talks in Geneva on a future peace treaty, according to officials in Baku and Yerevan, following recent deadly clashes between the arch-foes.

Last month, at least 286 people were killed on both sides before a United States-brokered truce ended the worst clashes since the Caucasus neighbors’ 2020 war.

Baku and Yerevan fought two wars—in 2020 and in the 1990s—over the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan.

A senior member of the Taliban-run government in Afghanistan has called on the country’s new rulers to reopen schools for girls beyond the sixth year, saying there is no valid reason in Islam for the ban.

The appeal from Taliban Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai on Tuesday came during a Taliban gathering in Kabul. It was a rare moderate voice amid the harsh measures imposed by the Taliban since they overran the country and seized power in August 2021.

Burkina Faso military leader Paul-Henri Damiba has been deposed in the country’s second coup in a year, as army Captain Ibrahim Traore took charge, dissolving the transitional government​, and suspending the constitution.

Traore said on Friday evening that a group of officers had decided to remove Damiba due to his inability to deal with a worsening armed uprising in the country.

Yemen’s warring sides have failed to reach an agreement to extend a nationwide ceasefire, the United Nations has said.

In a statement, the UN’s envoy to Yemen called on all sides to refrain from acts of provocation as the talks continue, after an October 2 deadline for extending the agreement expired.

The UN-backed truce initially took effect in April and raised hopes for a longer pause in fighting.

The video was released on Telegram channels on the morning of October 2, and it depicted a group of Azerbaijani soldiers shooting a group of unarmed Armenian soldiers.