The Democratic Republic of Congo will join the global fight against Islamic State, which President Felix Tshisekedi said poses a threat to his country.

Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters and Army Gen. Stephen J. Townsend faced questioning Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, following their nominations to head the European Command and Africa Command respectively.

U.S. Africa Command is aiding the buildup of a specialized commando brigade in Somalia that has emerged as a key force in the fight to reclaim territory held by al-Qaida-aligned insurgents.

A coup attempt in the central African nation hasn’t yet changed the mission of U.S. troops deployed there last week in response to potential violence in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, U.S. Africa Command said Monday.

Fighting between rival Libyan forces for control of Tripoli escalated in the past couple of days, a spokesman for the self-styled Libyan National Army said Saturday, as the death toll rose to at least 220, including combatants and civilians, since the LNA declared a major military offensive to take the capital earlier this month.

Attackers stormed a hospital at the epicenter of Congo's Ebola outbreak and killed "a dear colleague," the head of the World Health Organization said Friday as he condemned the latest violence against health workers trying to contain the virus.

Authorities arrested an Italian convert to Islam and a Moroccan resident who met over the Internet and were preparing to fight with Islamic State in Syria.

President Donald Trump has spoken by phone with Libya's Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter, who is leading an offensive to take over the capital of Tripoli — the seat of the U.N.-supported government.

A group that monitors jihadist websites says the Islamic State extremist group is claiming to have established a province in central Africa.

A United States airstrike killed a senior leader of the extremist rebels of the Islamic State in Somalia group involved in attacks in northern Somalia, U.S. military and a Somali official said Monday.

A U.S.-led exercise designed to improve protection of vital shipping lanes in the Mediterranean Sea and thwart seaborne crimes in North Africa wraps up this weekend, amid growing tensions in the region.

Tens of thousands of protesters converged on the main sit-in in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum on Thursday to pressure the ruling military council to speed up the transition of power to a civilian government as the new rulers announced the arrests of former president Omar al-Bashir's two brothers on corruption charges.

President Donald Trump’s elder daughter and senior adviser visited a coffee shop and textile company in Addis Ababa. It was her first stop in Africa on a four-day trip to Ethiopia and Ivory Coast on behalf of a White House project intended to boost 50 million women in developing countries by 2025.

Militia members attacked an Ebola treatment center hours after another attack killed a staffer with the World Health Organization, a Congolese official said Saturday.

Sudanese protest organizers on Friday stepped up calls for a swift transfer of power, saying they will announce an interim ruling council they want to see take over from the military that ousted President Omar al-Bashir after months of street protests against him.

The fighting between Libya's rival factions for control of the country's capital this month killed 205 people so far, the World Health Organization said, announcing it would deploy medical specialists, including surgeons, to treat the wounded.

Opinion

In Algeria and Sudan, where popular protests have recently toppled long-reigning tyrants, military cabals are re-emerging from the shadows to bid for power. In Libya, eight unstable years since the fall of a dictator, another aspiring caudillo is trying to seize control by force of arms.

On March 15, the earth shook so violently in Ngangu that people thought an earthquake had struck. It turned out to be thousands of tons of rock plowing through the eastern Zimbabwean village as rains and floods caused the surrounding hills to collapse.

The overnight rocket shelling on the high-density residential district of Abu Slim, less than 4.5 miles from the city center, prompted condemnation “in the strongest terms” from the U.N. envoy for Libya.

Congo's president on Tuesday said he wants to see a deadly Ebola virus outbreak contained in less than three months even as some health experts say it could take twice as long.

Just 58 percent of people on Madagascar's main island have been vaccinated against measles, a major factor in the outbreak's spread.

Recent clashes between rival Libyan militias for control of the capital Tripoli have displaced nearly 20,000 people, the U.N. said Tuesday, and prompted the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to warn that she could investigate and possibly prosecute new offenses.

The Sudanese military on Friday rejected calls that it hand over ousted President Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court where he faces genocide charges for his deadly campaign in the western Darfur region. Instead, he will be put on trial at home, a senior general said.

Suspected Islamist militants abducted two Cuban doctors in an ambush that killed a police bodyguard in northern Kenya near the Somali border, officials said Friday.

Sudan's military overthrew President Omar al-Bashir on Thursday amid increasingly bloody protests over his repressive 30-year rule and the deteriorating economy. But pro-democracy demonstrators were left angry and disappointed when the defense minister announced the armed forces will govern for the next two years.

Saudi King Salman ordered an unspecified package of aid for Sudan that includes petroleum products, wheat and medicine.

The fighting pits the LNA, led by Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter, against rival militias loosely affiliated with a weak U.N.-backed government based in Tripoli.

Analysis

Four months of street protests in Sudan gave way to a burst of political upheavals this week that - on the surface at least - appears to have upended the status quo after 30 years of strongman rule by Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo does not yet warrant being declared a global emergency but is of "deep concern," the World Health Organization said Friday.

The escalation in violence in and around Libya's capital has resulted in the displacement of more than 8,000 people, the United Nations said Thursday.

Sudan's defense minister, who led the overthrow Thursday of autocratic ruler Omar al-Bashir, has had his assets blocked by the U.S. Treasury since 2007 for supporting and managing militias accused of carrying out genocide in the country's Darfur conflict.

Zimbabwe's state media say the government has promised to exhume and rebury the bodies of thousands of people killed during a 1980s military campaign aimed at crushing dissidents.

Stephen Fonseca stood in a field of ruined maize where a tiny spine had been found, and he wanted to find the rest of the body. At a glance, much of the landscape looked like bones. The stark scene brought home the overwhelming challenge faced by Fonseca, the only body recovery specialist to search the rural Mozambique region struck by Cyclone Idai.

Khalifa Hifter, now 75, first became a military man in 1966 under King Idris I. Just three years later, he joined Moammar Gadhafi's coup against the crown.

Clashes between Sudanese security forces and protesters holding a large anti-government sit-in outside the military's headquarters in the capital Khartoum killed at least 11 people including six security forces, the government's spokesman said Wednesday.

Twenty-five years ago, Rwanda descended into an orgy of violence in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by the majority Hutu population over a 100-day period in what was the worst genocide in recent history.

A U.S. counterterrorism unit inaccurately reported the deaths of two civilians in Somalia following an airstrike, U.S. Africa Command said Friday, marking the first public acknowledgement that noncombatants have been killed in the military’s expanded bombing campaign in the country.

The United States needs higher level political engagement in Africa to counter China’s growing influence even as the military cuts back troop levels on the continent, U.S. Africa Command’s commander told lawmakers Thursday.

A U.S. military team dispatched to Mozambique to help with disaster relief efforts is assessing airfields in the country as it prepares to deliver supplies into areas where floods have forced thousands from their homes.

“Entering Kruger National Park illegally and on foot is not wise; it holds many dangers and this incident is evidence of that,” said Glenn Phillips, managing executive of Kruger National Park.

The identity of the kidnappers remained unknown. A ransom for Kimberly Sue Endicott, 35, of Costa Mesa, Calif., was paid by Wild Frontiers, the tour company that organized the excursion, but the amount was not disclosed.

A massive search and rescue effort was underway Wednesday in Uganda after an American tourist and a local guide were ambushed and kidnapped by four armed men demanding a $500,000 ransom, Ugandan police said.

Security officials are intensifying their search for an American tourist and her local guide kidnapped Tuesday evening after armed men ambushed them on a game drive in a national park in southwest Uganda.

Thirty-three countries are taking part in this year’s Obangame Express exercise off the West African coast so they can better combat crimes like piracy, drug smuggling and human trafficking.

The Pentagon authorized AFRICOM to expend up to $6.5 million in relief funds to provide logistics support for up to 10 days.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet has approved extending Germany's military missions in Africa for another year.

A report released Wednesday found five incidents in which 14 civilians were killed and eight injured in U.S. strikes in Somalia, which could be in violation of international law.

Burkina Faso was expected to adopt presidential term limits through a long-anticipated national vote – even as Islamist violence gripped the countryside.

Russian troops are already active in the Central African Republic, where they train local forces in combat techniques as part of an agreement reached in 2018. The next step could be a military base, Russian state media reported.

An explosives-laden vehicle detonated outside a busy restaurant in Somalia's capital, killing at least 10 people, police said Thursday.

The stall-prevention system on a Boeing Co. 737 Max jet automatically switched on before the plane crashed in Ethiopia this month, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing initial findings from the plane's flight data.

In the week since Cyclone Idai triggered unprecedented flooding in central Mozambique, there have been speculative death tolls in the thousands, but barely any bodies recovered.

Algeria's influential army chief on Tuesday urged that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika be declared unfit for office, a move that could pave the way for the ailing leader's ouster amid weeks of mass protests against his lengthy rule.