Six civilians were killed on Friday by an improvised explosive device (IED) near Boura, Mali’s southern region of Sikasso, a local security source confirmed to Xinhua on Saturday.

According to the officer, who requested the condition of anonymity out of fear, an ambulance carrying a patient from Boura hit an IED on Friday, killing six people on board, except the driver who “was severely injured and evacuated to Koutiala (south)’’.

Among the victims, there was a pregnant woman and a two-year-old kid, he said.

This is the first attack on civilians since the mutiny that led to the resignation of Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Also on Friday afternoon, about 10 kilometres away from Boura, local authorities found the bodies of the two local staff of Environment Ministry who were kidnapped by unknown armed men on Thursday night, said the officer.

The Malian army has been targeted four times, killing at least 21 soldiers with numerous injuries.

No individual or group has claimed responsibility for these attacks amid political instability in Mali.

The opposition coalition which led mass protests in Mali ahead of last month’s coup has rejected a transition charter.

On Saturday, the country’s military leadership agreed to establish an 18-month interim government until an election could take place.

It followed three days of talks with opposition and civil society groups.

But the M5-RFP group, which took part in the negotiations, said the resulting document was an attempt by military leaders to “grab and confiscate power”.

It also said the document did not take into account what it said was a majority vote for a civilian interim leader, and “did not reflect the views and decisions of the Malian people”.

West Africa’s regional bloc, Ecowas, had also called for the interim president to be a civilian, but the military leadership says a civilian or a soldier can fill the role.

The interim charter announced by the military leaders also states that an interim legislative body is to be established comprising M5-RFP members.

Six refugees from South Sudan have been killed and four others injured in a resettlement camp in Madi Okollo, north-western Uganda.

A police spokeswoman for the West Nile region, Josephine Angucia, said 13 villagers had been arrested in connection to the deaths on Friday.

The killings happened after a number of refugees assaulted a local man, Ajute Rahman Yassin, who was grazing his cattle near the resettlement camp.

But rumours spread Mr Ajute had died, prompting a mob to attack the camp.

The police and army are still looking for other suspects.

Uganda hosts some 1.4 millions refugees – more than any other country in Africa. Most are from neighbouring South Sudan.

In recent years tension has sometimes escalated between the refugees and host communities over resources such as land, firewood and water.

A report by the International Refugee Rights Initiative last year warned tensions in the north and north-western parts of the country could result in a broader conflict if not addressed.

Liberian President George Weah has declared rape a national emergency and has ordered new measures to tackle the problem after a recent spike of cases in the poor West African state.

The moves comes after thousands of Liberians protested rising incidents of rape in the capital Monrovia last month, in a bid to draw attention to the country’s alarming rate of sexual assault.

Late on Friday, Weah said he would install a special prosecutor for rape in Liberia, as well as set up a national sex offender registry, a statement from his office said.

The government will also establish a so-called “national security task force” on sexual- and gender-based violence.

The high rates of rape in impoverished Liberia, forced to contend both with war and the Ebola virus in recent years, has been a longstanding concern.

A UN report in 2016 recorded 803 rape cases the previous year in the country of 4.5 million, and found that only two percent of sexual violence cases led to a conviction, for example.

It was the resulting sense of impunity and the legacy of the 14-year civil war between 1989 and 2003, when rape was commonplace, that had created the current problem, it said.

Incidents of rape appear to have risen sharply this year, however.

Margaret Taylor, the director of Liberia’s Women Empowerment Network, told AFP last month that her NGO had recorded 600 cases of rape between June and August, for example.

That was up from between 80 and a hundred cases in May, she said.

Weah’s announcement of a national rape emergency follows a conference in the capital Monrovia on tackling sexual violence on Wednesday.

Addressing the meeting, the footballer-turned-president said Liberia was “witnessing what is actually an epidemic of rape within the pandemic, affecting mostly children and young girls across the country.”

Weah’s office said in the statement on Friday that further anti-rape measures will be announced.