A monitoring group said Monday it feared for the safety of tens of thousands of people who have fled their homes in Mali in the face of the offensive against Islamists controlling the north of the country.

At least 20 Palestinians were injured in clashes between protesters and Palestinian security forces at a refugee camp in Ramallah, medical sources said on Monday.

The US State Department has ordered all family members of embassy employees to leave Mali, amid the country's escalating conflict with Islamist militants who control the vast arid north.

Armed men opened fire on Friday in the north Lebanese city of Tripoli on the convoy of a pro-Damascus minister, wounding some of his bodyguards, a security official told AFP.

Rape by armed men of displaced women is on the rise to an alarming extent in camps around Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a medical charity.

Some 700,000 more Malians are expected to be displaced by the new wave of fighting in the restive country in the coming months, the UN refugee agency said Friday.

Desperate and unable to provide for his wife and four daughters, a Syrian refugee who swapped deadly violence in Damascus for destitution in Lebanon hanged himself on Tuesday.

Two suspected bombers died Thursday at one of the camps in Kenya's Dadaab complex, home to several hundred thousand Somali refugees, when the explosives they were carrying went off, police said.

Debt-ridden Jordan and the United Nations are complaining that low funds are hindering efforts to aid some 300,000 Syrian refugees in the country, hoping a donor meeting this month will be generous.

The UN's refugee agency said Wednesday it had received permission from Thailand to visit about 850 people, many thought to be from Myanmar's Rohingya minority, held after raids on camps in the Thai south.

The conflict in Mali has caused nearly 150,000 people to flee the country, while about another 230,000 are internally displaced, the UN humanitarian agency said Tuesday.

Kachin rebels in Myanmar said three civilians were killed and six wounded Monday in the first government attack on their stronghold, as fighting escalated in the country's last active civil war.

Rape has been a "significant" weapon of war in the conflict raging in Syria since March 2011 and is the "primary" factor in the exodus of women and children refugees to neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon, an aid group said on Monday.

Thailand arrested and pledged to deport more than 150 Myanmar Rohingya migrants discovered in a hidden camp near the country's southern border with Malaysia, police said Monday.

Kachin rebels on Monday said three civilians were killed and six wounded in the first attack by Myanmar forces on their northern stronghold, as fighting escalates in the country's last active civil war.

Around 400 Rohingya migrants discovered in a raid on a camp hidden in a remote rubber plantation in southern Thailand will be deported back to Myanmar, Thai police said on Friday.

Five civilians were killed in heavy fighting around a Palestinian refugee camp in the Syrian capital on Tuesday as rebels withdrew from a northwestern town after a night of clashes, a watchdog said.

Humanitarian workers distributing aid to Syrian refugees in northern Jordan after destructive rains were injured in a "stampede" on Tuesday, officials said.

Two youths died and several people were wounded during a grenade attack at a refugee camp in eastern Kenya near Somalia on Friday, an AFP journalist and police said.

Two youths died and several people were wounded during a grenade attack at a refugee camp in eastern Kenya near Somalia on Friday, an AFP journalist and police said.