The African Union has announced that four countries are setting up a joint military brigade to pursue the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group, which has mounted repeated attacks on their territory. Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Uganda have all been targeted by the LRA in the last two years. The town of Birao in the Central African Republic was attacked last Sunday, with girls abducted and shops looted. Here is our Africa editor Martin Plaut.
The brigade will be backed by an operation centre exchanging information and intelligence and coordinating operations. The plan envisages joint border patrols of the countries affected by LRA attacks. All this would be coordinated by an African Union special representative. Africa's international partners have called on to support this offensive against the LRA and not towards the United States, which is already backing Ugandan forces fighting the rebels.
The Sudanese government says the United Nations cannot move its peacekeeping forces to tense areas of the North-South border. A senior government politician told the BBC the UN should have sought the agreement of the government in Khartoum before announcing the redeployment. The President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, called for the UN deployment to border hotspots.
World News from the BBC
Police in Zambia are questioning two managers at a Chinese-run coal mine after at least 11 miners were shot and wounded as they protested about their working conditions. A police spokeswoman said they were looking into reports that managers had fired shotgun pellets on Friday because they felt threatened by the protest at the Collum mine in southern Zambia.