North Africa

A leading Egyptian rights group says authorities have blocked its website in a "new attack" on free speech.

Russian media say Egypt has finalised a deal to build a nuclear power plant with funding from Moscow after nearly two years of negotiations.

A suicide attack on a police station in western Algeria killed two policemen after one officer jumped on the attacker to protect his colleagues from the blast, state news agency APS and police said on Thursday.

Hashem Abedi, the younger brother of Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, will be tried in Libya over his suspected role in the attack, the BBC has been told.

Libya seized a foreign oil tanker and trawler Wednesday off the country's western coast and detained their crews for questioning in Tripoli, the navy and coastguard said.

Egypt has put the names of more than 350 people, including prominent Muslim Brotherhood figures, on its terrorism list.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has pardoned and released a prominent human rights activists who had been jailed since last year on spying and other charges, his family said.

Moroccan authorities have arrested a man suspected of supplying gas canisters to a jihadist cell that carried out a double attack in Catalonia earlier this month that killed 16 people, a source from the Spanish investigation said.

Libya’s coastguard rescued nearly 500 migrants on Tuesday at sea west of the capital Tripoli, a spokesman said, underlining the challenge of trying to slow an exodus from Africa and the Middle East.

Egyptian authorities have detained the deputy governor of the country's second largest city, the most senior female official to be arrested over corruption charges.