The French foreign minister reassured Mali on Friday that France was not planning an "overnight" withdrawal of the troops it sent to liberate the west African nation's north from Al-Qaeda-linked rebels. Laurent Fabius was in Bamako to discuss the pullout scheduled for the end of April with government and military figures including Prime Minister Diango Cissoko, who vowed that deeply-divided Mali was committed to holding July elections.

The French foreign minister reassured Mali on Friday that France was not planning an "overnight" withdrawal of the troops it sent to liberate the west African nation's north from Al-Qaeda-linked rebels. Laurent Fabius was in Bamako to discuss the pullout scheduled for the end of April with government and military figures including Premier Diango Cissoko, who vowed that deeply-divided Mali was committed to holding July elections.

Spanish and Moroccan rescuers on Tuesday intercepted four dinghies packed with 23 illegal immigrants trying to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and make landfall on Spain's southern shore. Spain's maritime service said rescuers had picked up 12 migrants who were travelling on two boats while Morocco had intercepted 11 people who were on another two vessels. The migrants were given blankets and transported to the port of Tarifa in the Spanish province of Cadiz which is located across the Strait of Gibraltar facing Morocco.

An armed Islamist group which occupied northern Mali last year vowed Tuesday to continue its fight to drive out the French and African troops that routed it in a lightning military operation in January. Ansar Dine, Arabic for "defenders of the faith", was one of three militant organisations to take advantage of the disarray following a coup to claim control of Mali's vast northern desert, imposing a brutal form of sharia law in its cities.