Mali Islamists buying child soldiers for £375

Islamists who have taken over northern Mali are "buying child soldiers" from their families for £375 and compiling a "frightening" list of unmarried women who are pregnant or had borne children, according to senior UN official.
Rebel fighters, among them extremists with links to al-Qaeda, are "buying loyalty" among the local population by abolishing taxes and paying for fighters and wives in a country where more than half the people live on less than 80p a day.
Women bought as wives from their families for as little as £620 are frequently resold in a form of "enforced prostitution", said Ivan Simonovic, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, said after a fact-finding visit to the country.
There have been three public executions, eight amputations and two floggings, he added, and as well as bans on smoking and listening to music, women are now expected to cover their heads and their ability to work has been restricted.
His report indicates an extension of the Sharia law system the extremists have sought to implement since taking over an area the size of France in March when a coup plunged the country into chaos.
On Thursday several thousand Malians took to the streets of the capital Bamako, in the south, to protest at the radical behaviour of the Islamists and call for urgent military action against them by a West African force.
"If nothing is done in coming days, the existence of our country will be in danger," said a statement issued by organisers of the march. "To fail to help Mali will be a serious error on the part of the African and international community in the face of history, a crime of non-assistance to a people in danger."
Mali, West African regional body ECOWAS and the African Union have asked the UN Security Council to back such action, but the 15-member council wants a more detailed plan before it will approve it.
Mr Simonovic said he had based his report on details gleaned from people travelling to and from northern Mali. An estimated third of the population in the occupied area has fled, with around 270,000 seeking refuge in neighbouring countries.
He said that since the Islamists had wrested control from Tuareg rebels who initially took over in the north following the coup, the nature of attacks on the local population had changed from lootings and rapes to a more organised crackdown.
"What is new now is that human rights violations are becoming more systematic," Mr Simonovic told reporters at UN headquarters in New York, adding that Islamists had "imposed an extremist version of Sharia".
"Children are particularly vulnerable in the north," he said. "I heard from one testimony that children were also involved in learning how to produce improvised explosive devices and three children were injured in an explosion."