the uncertainty to seize positions in the north. Captain Sanogo said he wanted peace talks with them.
"The Tuareg people in the north, Arab people are our brothers. I want all of them to come to the same table. My door is open. We can talk about and work out through the peace process."
The Malian capital Bamako was reported to be quieter on Saturday after earlier looting.
Thousands of extra police are on the streets of the Nigerian capital Abuja, where members of the governing party are meeting to choose a new executive. Roads leading to the conference
venue
have been blocked. Security has been tightened following a series of deadly attacks by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
The Turkish government says 15 Kurdish militants, all of them women, have been killed in fighting with the security forces. The clashes took place in the southeastern province of Bitlis, which is a centre of the banned PKK militants. Jonathan Head is in Istanbul.
As many as one third of the PKK's fighting force are women - a legacy of the group's one-time Marxist
ideology
, which prioritised the raising of women's status in Kurdish society. So women casualties are not unusual, but for 15 women to be killed in a single clash certainly is. The Turkish interior ministry is giving few details of the incident. It occurred in Bitlis, a province known for strong PKK support, during a large-scale military operation against the organisation in the mountains bordering Iraq.