A coordinated attack involving a suicide bomber at an open-air election campaign meeting in central Iraq killed 25 people on Saturday, the latest in a spike in unrest two weeks before provincial polls. The assault raises further questions over the credibility of the election, Iraq's first since 2010, and comes some 10 years after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein and aimed to usher in a stable democracy but instead unleashed brutal violence which continues to plague the country.

A coordinated attack involving a suicide bombing on a open-air election campaign meeting north of Baghdad killed at least 10 people on Saturday, officials said, two weeks before provincial polls. A militant had thrown a grenade on the meeting in the restive city of Baquba, 60 kilometres (35 miles) from the Iraqi capital, before a suicide bomber blew himself up, a police colonel and a medic at the city hospital said. At least 25 people were wounded in the attack.

Thousands of refugees from war-torn Mali have crossed into neighbouring Niger amid fears of reprisals by the country's military who are battling Islamist fighters, the UN refugee agency said Friday. Almost 6,000 people, mainly women and children, arrived on foot or on donkeys, said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "They say they fled because of the ongoing war in northern Mali, and for fear of possible reprisals by the Malian army. They also said that more people are on their way to Niger," Edwards told reporters.

By Laurent Prieur NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's wing in north Africa said it had beheaded a French hostage in retaliation for France's intervention in Mali, Mauritania's ANI news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a spokesman for the group. In what ANI reported was a telephone call to the agency, which has close links to Islamist militants, the commander said Philippe Verdon had been beheaded on March 10 "in response to the French military intervention in the north of Mali", ANI reported.