The United Nations Security Council today welcomed the deployment by the so-called Group of Five (G5) – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – of a joint force to tackle the threat of terrorism, as well as the serious challenges posed by transnational organized crime in Africa’s restive Sahel region.

Unanimously adopting a new resolution, the Council welcomed the joint force’s strategic concept of operations, saying it intended to review the deployment in four months’ time. It requested that the Secretary-General, in close coordination with the Group of Five (G5) Sahel States, as well as the African Union – to provide an oral update within two months.

Also by that text, the Council urged the joint force of up to 5,000 military and police personnel, as well as the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and French forces in that country to ensure adequate coordination and exchange of information regarding their operations, within their respective mandates. In that regard, it reiterated its request that the Secretary-General enhance cooperation between MINUSMA and the G5 Sahel States through the relevant intelligence and liaison officers.

The resolution also urged the G5 Sahel States to continue efforts to make the joint force operational in a sustainable, viable and effective manner. It also welcomed the European Union’s commitment to provide €50 million in financial support, and encouraged further support from bilateral and multilateral partners.

Emphasizing the important role of women in preventing conflict and peacebuilding, the Council underlined the need to take a gender perspective into account in implementing all aspects of the strategic concept of operations.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in the Sahel, abject poverty, fast population growth, climate change, recurrent food and nutrition crises, armed conflicts and violence converge dangerously and undermine the lives and assets and future prospects of millions of families across the region. More than 30 million people face food insecurity, one in five children under the age of five suffers from acute malnutrition and at least 4.9 million are displaced by the effects of conflicts.

A double suicide attack killed six civilians in Cameroon’s restive Far North, which is regularly hit by Nigeria-based Boko Haram jihadists, security sources said.

The deadly blasts happened in Kolofata, where nine people died in a double suicide bombing in early June.

“There were eight killed, six civilians and the two attackers,” a source close to Cameroon’s security service said of Wednesday’s violence.

Another security source confirmed the death toll, but no further details were immediately available.

The Far North region, which borders Nigeria, has seen a resurgence in attacks blamed on Boko Haram after months of relative calm.

In mid-June two civilians were killed in an attack in Limani, which is near Kolofata and the Nigerian border. Earlier in the month a soldier was also killed in Kolofata

Sudanese authorities on Tuesday brought home from Libya eight children, including a 1-year-old, whose parents are members of the Islamic State group, like reported by japantimes.co.jp .

The children were flown into Khartoum from the Libyan capital Tripoli, an AFP correspondent said.

“Thanks be to Allah, today eight children,” were brought back from Libya, Brigadier Tijani Ibrahim of Sudan’s powerful National Intelligence and Security Service (NSS) told reporters.

Six of the children will be handed over to relatives while the state will take care of the other two because authorities could not find any next of kin, he said.

Ibrahim said the children were brought out of Libya with help from the Libyan Red Crescent, and that four more children were expected to be flown back to Sudan at an unspecified time.

A representative for the Sudanese community in the Libyan city of Misrata, Motaz Abbas, accompanied the children home.

He said their parents “are members of the Islamic State group.

“Their mothers have been arrested by Libyan authorities and their fathers are listed as missing,” Abbas said.

Libya descended into chaos following the NATO-backed ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, with rival administrations and militias vying for control of its vast oil wealth.

The infighting and lawlessness allowed extremist groups such as IS to seize several coastal regions, giving the jihadis a toehold on Europe’s doorstep.

In February a four-month-old baby girl born to Sudanese parents who were IS fighters in Libya was also brought home and entrusted to the care of her grandfather.

Her mother and father were killed during fighting in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, which IS had transformed into a bastion to train jihadis before pro-government forces retook it in December 2016.

Sudanese officials says dozens of young Sudanese have joined IS in Libya, Syria and Iraq.

A police officer says a suicide car bomber has detonated at a district headquarters in Somalia’s capital, killing at least seven people, like reported by ap.org.

Capt. Mohamed Hussein says the bomber posing as a milk delivery van sneaked into the Wadajir district headquarters in Mogadishu.

Hussein says most of the dead are civilians.

The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group has claimed responsibility for the attack via its Shahada News Agency, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

The blast comes less than a week after al-Shabab gunmen carried out an overnight siege on a popular restaurant in the Somali capital, killing at least 31 people.

An Al-Qaeda linked coalition of jihadi groups has claimed responsibility for attacking a tourist resort near Mali’s capital on Sunday and killing five people, like reported by newsweek.com.

The Group to Support Islam and Muslims—a coalition that was created by the merger of at least four groups, three with well-known ties to Al-Qaeda—said in a statement that three of its “martyrs” had killed Westerners in the attack on the Kangaba Le Campement resort, which the group called a site of “debauchery,” AFP reported.

A total of five people, excluding the attackers, were killed in the attack. European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini confirmed that two of the victims were EU staff—a Portuguese soldier and a Malian employee of the EU delegation in the North African country.

Two civilians — one Chinese and one Gabonese — and a Malian soldier were also killed, the BBC reported.

Four of the militants were killed during the attack and another four have been arrested, Mali’s Security Minister Salif Traore told AFP.

The attackers shouted “Allahu Akbar”—Arabic for “God is great”—during the attack, according to some witnesses. Traore said that 36 hostages, mostly French and Malian, had also been freed during the rescue mission.

The resort is popular with foreign tourists and members of international forces in Mali. The Portuguese soldier who died was an off-duty member of the EU’s army training mission in Mali. Soldiers from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA—one of the organization’s deadliest deployments—also reportedly frequent the resort.

The attack is the latest in a string of high-profile incidents at tourist resorts in the region in recent years. Jihadis affiliated to Al-Qaeda attacked the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako in November 2015, killing 20 people including Russians, Chinese and an American.

Al-Qaeda linked groups also claimed major attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital, in January 2016, and at the Grand Bassam resort in Ivory Coast in March 2016.

The U.S. Embassy in Bamako had issued an updated travel warning earlier in June, warning of a “possible increased threat of attacks” against Western sites, including diplomatic missions, places of worships, and other tourist destinations. Washington advises against all travel by its citizens to the North African country.

Mali has been a hive of jihadi activity since a 2012 uprising in which a loose coalition of Islamist and ethnic Tuareg groups seized control of the country’s vast, arid north.

A French counter-insurgency operation helped to dislodge the jihadis in 2013, but militant groups continue to operate and launch regular attacks, particularly in northern and central Mali.

While Al-Qaeda is the dominant force in the region, the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) recently recognized a small splinter group, known as Islamic State Greater Sahara, which has been linked to several attacks in Burkina Faso and Niger.

Five female suicide bombers killed 12 people and wounded 11 in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state, police said on Monday, like reported by reuters.com..

Borno state police spokesman Victor Isuku said the attacks took place on Sunday at around 08:30 p.m. (1930 GMT) in Kofa community, around 8 km (5 miles) from the state capital Maiduguri.

Islamist militant group Boko Haram killed 14 people in bombings and shootings in Maiduguri on June 7.

Malian security forces have killed five militants involved in an attack at the weekend on a luxury resort popular with Western expatriates outside Mali’s capital Bamako, the security minister said on Monday according to reuters.com.

“This was without doubt a terrorist attack,” Security Minister Salif Traore told Radio France International. “The anti-terrorist forces arrived on the scene immediately afterwards. Five terrorists were killed … The operations continued throughout the night.”

Traore added that the militants had some accomplices who had not been killed or detained. On Sunday night, authorities reported that two of the assailants had been killed.

Insecurity is spreading in Mali and across its borders as the number of militant attacks rose and new armed groups emerged over the past year, underscoring the need for military cooperation in West Africa, according to the United Nations Secretary General according to bloomberg.com.

Violent Islamic extremists carried out 201 attacks against the Malian security forces, UN peacekeepers and French troops since June last year, compared to 165 assaults in the previous 12 months, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a report to the Security Council published Thursday. Mali’s central regions registered a 42 percent increase in attacks, at a time the UN operation in the country is hindered by a lack of armored vehicles and attack helicopters, according to the report.

“The growing spillover of instability in Mali into its neighbors demonstrates the need for enhanced regional cooperation,” Guterres in the report, referring to an initiative of five West African countries known as the G5 Sahel to set up a military force by the end of this year. The plan is yet to be approved by the Security Council.

‘Dire Consequences’

Guterres also urged the Security Council to “prioritize and strengthen the political and security tasks” of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali.

Mali’s government must consult with stakeholders before submitting a revised constitution to a nationwide referendum in July and speed up the implementation of the 2015 Algiers peace accord, Guterres said in the report. “Failing to do so could seriously jeopardize the hard work and achievements made thus far, with dire consequences for the country and the region,” he said.

Mali has been gripped by violence since ethnic Tuareg rebels began an insurgency in the north of the country and joined forces with Islamist militants in 2012. The West African nation experienced its deadliest attack yet in January, when a bomb hidden in a vehicle killed almost 80 people inside a military camp in Gao.

The UN has more than 13,000 military personnel in the country.

At least 19 civilians were killed when Islamist attackers launched a car bomb and gun attack on a busy hotel and an adjacent restaurant in the Somali capital Mogadishu, a police officer said on Thursday.

Abdi Bashir told Reuters the Somali security forces took control of the restaurant at midnight after the gunmen held hostages inside for several hours. Five of the gunmen were killed, Bashir added.