News in brief

40 killed in attacks in restive central Mali
AFP, Bamako
Forty people, including nine soldiers, have been killed in a spate of attacks in central Mali, authorities said Friday, with most of the deaths caused by inter-ethnic violence in the deeply troubled region.
Thirty-one people were killed in an attack overnight in Ogossagou, a village mainly inhabited by Fulani people where 160 died last March in a massacre blamed on Dogon militiamen, the government said, raising the death toll.

S.Sudan president offers key
compromise for peace
AFP, Juba
President Salva Kiir said on Saturday that he will return South Sudan to a system of 10 states, a key opposition demand, paving the way for a unity government to end war.
“The compromise we have just made is in the interest of peace…I expect the opposition to reciprocate the same,” Kiir said, after a meeting of top government and military officials in the capital Juba.

Protester shot dead in Iraqi capital
AFP, Baghdad
A demonstrator was shot dead near the Iraqi capital’s main protest camp by unidentified attackers using a gun silencer, medics said Saturday, as police reported a spate of activist abductions.
Around 550 people have been killed since the anti-government movement erupted in October and around 30,000 more have been wounded, a vast majority of them young demonstrators.

Eight civilians killed in Afghanistan air strike
AFP, Jalalabad
An air strike in Afghanistan has killed at least eight civilians, officials said Saturday, as the war-torn country prepares for a “reduction in violence” under a deal between Taliban militants and the United States.
The incident took place in the eastern province of Nangarhar on Friday when a vehicle carrying civilians was struck, according to Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor.