Mali's prime minister has presented his resignation on state television, hours after soldiers who led a recent coup arrested him at his home in Bamako.

US military planners have begun to help organize a multinational proxy force to intervene next year in Mali, the famine-stricken, coup-wracked African country that has become a magnet for Islamist extremists, US officials said Wednesday.

Terror groups operating in Mali, Nigeria and elsewhere in northern Africa are collaborating among themselves and receiving training from al-Qaida affiliates in the region, according to the head of the U.S. Africa Command.

West African nations have agreed to send some 3,000 troops to help Mali wrest back control of its northern half, which was seized by al-Qai'da-linked fighters more than six months ago, according to an official involved in the discussions.

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Islamism is on the march and threatening to wipe out the country's cultural heritage. Rose Skelton reports from Bamako

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Despite international condemnation, the radical Islamic faction controlling the northern Malian outpost of Timbuktu continued destroying the city's ancient tombs today, laying waste to the city's five-hundred-year-old heritage.

A resident of the northern Mali city of Timbuktu says Islamists who control the town are trying to destroy tombs classified as UNESCO World Heritage sites. 

Two rebel groups that seized control of the northern half of Mali have agreed to work together to create an independent Islamic state on the territory they occupy.

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.