Mali's military junta said it has arrested about 240 people allegedly associated with an attempted coup earlier this week, and that they are shooting guns into the air as a warning as they try to round up more people they blame for the chaos.

The Prime Minister of Guinea-Bissau was arrested by soldiers in an apparent coup yesterday, hours after a grenade attack on his home and two weeks before he was to take part in a presidential election.

From one of the hiding places where he has been holed up since last month's coup, Mali's president penned a resignation letter and handed it to an emissary to deliver to the country's new leaders, while reporters looked on.

The leader of Mali's National Assembly, forced into exile after last month's coup, returned this weekend, marking the first step in the country's path back to constitutional rule.

Pope Benedict XVI used his Easter Sunday message to urge the Syrian regime to heed international calls to end bloodshed and commit to dialogue.

Mali's coup leader, Amadou Sanogo, said yesterday that the junta would hand power to an interim government within days. Neighbouring nations, in return, will end sanctions and help tackling rebels who have seized much of the north.

Economic blockade on coup leaders in the south complicates fragile regional balance

Staff are being withdrawn from the British Embassy in Mali in the wake of the military coup.

Tuareg-led rebels who have seized control of northern Mali announced a ceasefire yesterday, saying they had achieved their aim of creating a state they called Azawad.

Mali faces an economic blockade after a day of contrasting democratic fortunes in West Africa, where Senegal swore in its newly-elected president and pressure mounted on coup leaders in Bamako to step down.

Mali's junta leader declared amid international pressure yesterday that he was reinstating the 1992 constitution and planning to hold elections, as rebels claimed to have seized the historic town of Timbuktu.

British citizens have been warned to leave the African state of Mali unless they have "urgent business".

Were it not for the looming presence of al-Qa'ida (AQIM) in the Maghreb, last week's military coup in Mali might be met with the half-anxious apathy with which the international community usually greets upheavals in Saharan Africa.

A soldier loads a stolen fridge onto the back of a truck in Mali yesterday as other mutineering troops looted petrol stations, shops and hijacked vehicles.