The UN Security Council on Thursday unanimously backed sending up to 12,600 international troops and police to take over from French and African forces battling Islamist guerrillas in Mali. The United Nations is aiming for a July 1 start by the new force, but the 15-nation council will decide later whether the conflict has eased enough for the handover. French troops moved into Mali in January to halt an Islamist advance on the capital Bamako and have since forced the Al-Qaeda-linked militants into desert and mountain hideouts.

The United States has withdrawn a demand that the United Nations start human rights investigations in disputed Western Sahara following furious lobbying by Morocco, diplomats said Tuesday. Morocco, which has occupied the Western Sahara since the 1970s, had condemned the US move to put the demand in a UN Security Council resolution on the UN peacekeeping mission in the North African territory to be voted on Thursday. It called off military exercises with the United States to show its anger.

The United Nations said Wednesday it would investigate dozens of claims of rape by army officers and rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The UN's mission in the country, Monusco, said that 126 cases of rape were recorded between November 15 and 30 last year in and around Minova, in the restive eastern province of South Kivu. Monusco will lead "an inquiry into rights violations by the army and the M23" rebel movement, spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai said Wednesday.

By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - An army battalion in the Democratic Republic of Congo, some of whose members have been accused of mass rape, was trained by the United States, a senior U.N. envoy said on Tuesday. The United Nations said 126 women were raped in Minova in Congo's volatile east in November after Congolese army troops fled to the town when M23 rebels briefly captured the nearby provincial capital, Goma.