Eritrea, which celebrates the 20th anniversary of its independence on May 24, is one of the most isolated countries in the world. GEOGRAPHY: The country, which covers about 121,000 square kilometres (48,500 square miles), is located between Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti and occupies a strategic place in the Horn of Africa region. It has a 1,000 kilometre (620 mile) coastline along one of the world's busiest shipping lanes on the Red Sea.

A cyclone slammed into the Bangladeshi coast Thursday as a million people hunkered down in evacuation shelters, including in a region of Myanmar torn by communal unrest. Four people died as Cyclone Mahasen hit Bangladesh's Patuakhali coast, officials said. Rain and strong winds lashed neighbouring Myanmar's northwest coast, home to tens of thousands of displaced Muslim Rohingya.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh and Myanmar were ordered to evacuate Wednesday as a cyclone bore down on coastal areas home to flood-prone refugee camps for victims of sectarian unrest. The United Nations has warned that more than eight million people could be at risk from Cyclone Mahasen, which is expected to make landfall on Thursday or Friday somewhere near the border between the two countries.

An Islamist suicide bomber on Friday attacked a camp of soldiers from Niger posted in troubled northeastern Mali, but the only casualty was the assailant, military sources said. "Around 5:00 am (0500 GMT), a kamikaze in a car busted through the entrance to our military camp at Menaka. We fired our weapons and the kamikaze blew himself up," a Nigerien military source said. "He is dead, but there were no victims among our ranks," the source added, stating that the Nigerien troops had gone on to "a state of alert".