An RAF surveillance aircraft has been deployed in support of the French military action in Mali, the Ministry of Defence said. Prime Minister David...

Security and defence chiefs will discuss increasing UK support for the French-led military operation in Mali after David Cameron vowed to show "iron r...

So what have the French got themselves into? And even more importantly, do they have any idea how they're going to get themselves out again?

Islamist militants are holding a number of Britons and foreign nationals hostage after armed terrorists stormed a natural gas field in the east of Alg...

David Cameron has agreed to help transport foreign troops and equipment to Mali amid efforts to halt an advance by Islamist rebels in a conflict that ...

Oumar, 16, was preparing for exams when insurgents overran his historic town of Timbuktu. The town was first captured in March by fighters from the Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) who want an independent state in north Mali. Weeks later, Islamist extremists seized the town from them.

The emergency in Mali has different characteristics than in Niger. There are no camps or large scale food programmes that one sees in the media where thousands of women queue for rations. However, one of the ways in which it is manifested is in child labour. Thousands of children have dropped out of school to go find work to help support the family.

During the food crisis, nearly 400,000 children in Niger are at risk of severe acute malnutrition because they have not had sufficient food to eat or a balanced diet. At the Tillaberi CRENI (hospital for children) built by Plan and managed by the government, I've met infants severely malnourished and tottering on the brink of death.

The Tuaregs here told me horror stories of pillage and plunder of their livestock, food, homes, clothes and their women - some had been raped and assaulted. Other women were taken from their homes never to be seen again. Other loved ones were missing and presumed dead...

In the space of 10 months, Niger has been hit by a food crisis brought on by high market prices and poor harvests, a refugee crisis triggered by conflict in neighbouring Mali, followed by a cholera outbreak and now devastating floods. It has left many in this West African state wondering when the next disaster is and what could it possibly be?

This understanding that wider determinates of poverty have a big impact on the risks of mothers dying in childbirth is reinforced by evidence, not only from our own programmes but from scientific studies.

In reality, what is happening in Timbuktu is one group within the broad spectrum of Islam violently imposing its blinkered ideology on another tradition in Islam with which it disagrees.

Here in Mali, families are trapped in a perfect storm - the consequences of climate change and political regime change. Drought has led to a dreadful harvest and rocketing prices, whilst the departure of Gaddafi has led to migrating mercenaries, laden with arms.

There are no proper words to describe the heartbreaking sight of a malnourished child. No image on TV can prepare you for the sheer lightness of their bodies, their minuscule wrists, their over-sized, slightly bulging heads; the breathtaking shock of realising that the cute baby who looks newborn is actually nearly two years old. Malnourishment is not something that enters our world very often. Ours is a place where 60 stone teenagers must be hoisted out of their homes by the local fire service because they no longer fit through their front doors. It's a place where five-year-old girls worry themselves silly about being thinner, aspiring to a 'body ideal' that's estimated to be not physically achievable by 95% of the population.

The British embassy in Mali has been closed as violence in the country threatens to spill out of control. Mali's under-fire military junta is comin...

A British couple have fled Timbuktu with the help of African soldiers and nomadic militiamen after the Malian city fell to rebel forces. Neil White...