The M23 rebel group in eastern DR Congo said Monday that hundreds of its commanders were undergoing special training to face an offensive by a newly-formed UN combat force. "462 unit commanders have been on a refresher course since Friday in Rumangabo," a large military base in the North Kivu province, the group's military spokesman Vianney Kazarama told AFP. The UN Security Council this year approved its first ever offensive peacekeeping brigade in a bid to end years of failure in rooting out rebel groups and killer gangs in the restive region.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Wednesday called for an inquiry into reports of violence and sexual abuse of migrants crossing over from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Pillay, speaking in a news conference in the Angolan capital during a three-day visit, said such allegations had been circulating for a decade.

The French army handed over its security operation in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu to Burkina Faso troops on Tuesday, as part of a phased withdrawal from its troubled former colony. Al Qaeda-linked Islamic militants controlled Timbuktu along with other key northern Mali cities for nearly 10 months until being driven out by the French-led Operation Serval in January.

Regional military power Mauritania is ready to send 1,800 soldiers into neighbouring Mali as part of an incoming UN peacekeeping force as France and Chad phase in troop drawdown, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Thursday. "The Mauritanian president assured me on Monday night that he was (favourably) pre-disposed, depending on conditions to be worked out, to sending 1,800 men to join the future contingent," Fabius told the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee meeting in France.