Nairobi (AFP) - The United States on Sunday ordered non-emergency US government personnel and dependents to leave violence-torn Burundi and warned other Americans to get out "as soon as it is feasible to do so".

The State Department warning followed some of the worst violence in months of political unrest in the capital Bujumbura on Friday that left nearly 90 people dead.

"The US Department of State warns US citizens against all travel to Burundi and recommends that US citizens currently in Burundi depart as soon as it is feasible to do so," it said in a statement.

The Burundi army said 87 people were killed -- with the breakdown given by Colonel Gaspard Baratuza as 79 "enemies" and eight soldiers -- during and after coordinated assaults on three military installations early on Friday morning.

Several witnesses accused the security forces of extrajudicial killings in the hours following the attacks and overnight into Saturday morning, describing officers breaking down doors in search of young men and shooting them at close range.

Some of the victims had their arms tied behind their backs, they said.

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Military personnel sit aboard a vehicle driving through the Musaga neighbourhood of the city of Buju …

The government was quick to clear bodies from the streets, burying them in mass graves, with critics saying the move aimed to prevent further investigation of the deaths and to disguise the real number of people killed.

Friday's fighting was the worst outbreak since a failed May coup sparked by President Pierre Nkurunziza's bid for a third term in office, which he later won in disputed elections in July.

US rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Sunday for a "serious and independent" enquiry to be carried out urgently into the latest violence.

"This is by far the most serious incident, with the highest number of victims, since the start of the crisis in April," Carina Tertsakian, HRW's researcher for Burundi, said in a statement.

"A serious, independent investigation is urgently needed to find out the exact circumstances in which these people were killed," she said.

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Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza in Bujumbura after being sworn in for a controversial thir …

The European Union likewise called for the perpetrators behind the violence to be brought to justice and urged Burundi's opposing sides to begin a political dialogue with Uganda acting as mediator.

The bloc stood ready to provide a financial contribution to get the talks off to an "immediate start", EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and European Commissioner for Development Neven Mimica said in a joint statement.

Belgium also expressed its concern over Burundi's deteriorating security situation, with Foreign Minister Didier Reynders saying he would raise the issue at Monday's meeting of EU counterparts in Brussels.

- Echoes of civil war -

Months of street protests against Nkurunziza have devolved into frequent armed attacks, with gunfire regularly erupting at night in Bujumbura and dead bodies a frequent sight on the city's streets.

Attacks targeting the security forces have escalated, with rebels armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars attacking police convoys and targeting government installations.

Residents of Bujumbura have become used to the unrest, and despite the scale and severity of the most recent violence the city was calm on Sunday with life returning to normal.

The UN Security Council met Friday following a request from France, with UN chief Ban Ki-moon saying the attacks risked triggering "a further destabilisation of the situation" and urging all sides to hold back, according to his spokesman.

UN figures released before Friday's violence showed at least 240 people had been killed and more than 200,000 had fled abroad since May, raising fears of a return to civil war, a decade after the end of a 1993-2006 conflict between rebels from the Hutu majority and an army dominated by minority Tutsis.

Some 300,000 people were killed in the war, which began a year before a genocide of mostly Tutsis in neighbouring Rwanda.

The Security Council has said that sending UN peacekeepers to the nation remained an option, and stressed the need for urgent political dialogue.

Libyan students play in the courtyard of the al-Bashayer school in the eastern coastal city of Benghazi as they come back to school for the first time since August 2014 when Islamist-backed militias seized Tripoli. – AFP pic, December 14, 2015.

Schools in the war-torn Libyan city of Benghazi reopened on Sunday for the first time in a year and a half, although international peace efforts have yet to quell the fighting.

"I'm so happy to be back at school," a 13-year-old girl said before going into class at Beshayer school.

Its classrooms stand just 500m away from the scene of some of the fiercest clashes between government forces and armed groups including jihadists over the past 18 months.

"Everything's quite normal," she said, a whisp of hair showing beneath a flowery yellow headscarf.

"I'm not scared."

In jeans and sweatshirts, young pupils improvised a football game in the schoolyard. Outside, parents dropped off their children, relieved their education was back on track.

Abdelaziz al-Dinali waved his two children goodbye from his parked car as they resumed classes, two months later than pupils in the rest of the country.

"God willing, with the return to school, security will also return to Benghazi," he said.

Schools in Libya's second city closed in mid-2014, with the country in chaos ever since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Islamist-backed militias seized the capital that summer, prompting the internationally recognised government to flee to the far east of the country.

As a temporary solution, the local education board instructed children in Benghazi, 1,000km to the east of Tripoli, to study the national curriculum at home.

Parents picked up schoolbooks from government offices and children only went to school for exams.

Teaching in shifts

Home schooling took place as fighting raged across the city, killing hundreds and displacing tens of thousands.

Around 2,000 people died in Benghazi between the beginning of 2014 and last month – the highest for any Libyan city in that period, independent website Libya Body Count says.

Some 100,000 people fled their homes in the city, according to the United Nations, emptying entire neighbourhoods.

Only about a third of the city's 254 schools reopened this weekend.

As thousands were made homeless, 64 schools became shelters for the displaced, a spokesman for the local education board said.

"Thirty-one schools have been used as alternatives to Benghazi's universities" in areas of fighting, Ahmad al-Qibaili said.

The education ministry now faces the challenge of accommodating up to 150,000 pupils in the 77 schools it has reopened.

Ideas have been mooted to teach in morning and afternoon shifts or in two three-day blocs during the week, according to an official source.
No extra security measures were taken outside Beshayer school on Sunday, but parents had to pass through the city's many checkpoints before dropping off their children.

New schoolbooks and uniforms had still not arrived.

As the international community steps up pressure on rival factions to agree on a national unity government to end Libya's conflict, Benghazi's children are making a fresh start.

"All those who didn't show up should come!" 11-year-old Mohammed Abdelaziz said. – AFP, December 14, 2015.

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Jerusalem (AFP) - A 16-year-old Palestinian girl tried to carry out a stabbing attack Sunday near the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank before being shot, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

"A Palestinian armed with a knife attempted to stab a pedestrian in Hebron," the Israeli military said in a statement.

"Forces on site responded to the imminent danger and fired towards the perpetrator, who has been evacuated to a hospital in Jerusalem for medical treatment."

A spokeswoman for Hadassah hospital said the assailant was being transferred there but could not provide her condition.

Palestinian security sources named her as 16-year-old Hebron resident Lama al-Bakri.

Further details on the incident were not immediately available.

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The mother of Eyad Awawda mourns over his body on October 17, 2015 after he was was shot dead when h …

The Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba is located in the southern West Bank on the outskirts of the flashpoint city of Hebron, where much of a surge in violence since October has been focused.

Tensions have been high between several hundred Israeli settlers who live in the heart of Hebron under heavy military guard and some 200,000 Palestinian residents.

Since October 1, almost daily attacks by Palestinians and clashes with Israeli soldiers have killed 116 on the Palestinian side, 17 Israelis, an American and an Eritrean.

Many of the Palestinians killed have been attackers, while others have been shot dead by Israeli security forces during clashes.

Young Palestinians have grown frustrated with Israel's occupation and the complete lack of progress in peace efforts in addition to their own fractured leadership.

Arms manufacturers in North America and Western Europe dominated international arms sales in 2014, but their market share dropped while Russian and Asian companies saw theirs rise, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported Monday.

Total turnover for the 100 biggest arms and military services companies declined for the fourth year in a row, falling by 1.5 percent from 2013 to stand at $401 billion (364 billion euros).

The top company was US-based Lockheed Martin, which saw sales grow by 3.9 percent to $37.5 billion for 2014.

Companies based in Western Europe and the United States continue to dominate the top 100, with 80 percent of the total market share. But sales for Western European and US companies decreased by 3.2 percentage points between 2013 and 2014.

In Western Europe "a large part of the defence spending, which is missing, is from procurement. It's easier to cut procurement than to cut salaries -- so the quickest thing to do is just buy less," said Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at SIPRI's Arms and Military Expenditure Programme.

Meanwhile, the 36 companies representing the rest of the world on SIPRI's list saw their sales soar by 25 percent, boosted by an almost 50-percent rise in Russian arms sales.

"Russian companies are riding the wave of increasing national military spending and exports," said Wezeman.

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Potential customers and the curios inspect a naval gun system manufactured by Turkey's ASELSAN d …

The combined annual revenue growth of the 11 Russian companies on SIPRI's list from 2013–14 was 48.4 percent, according to the report.

The top Russian company on the list was Almaz-Antey, taking 11th place with a turnover of $8.84 billion. Almaz-Antey manufactures the BUK missile, which was allegedly used to shoot down a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on July 17, 2014 in Ukraine.

Much of Russia's weapons production is delivered to its own armed forces, but it also has large clients in other parts of the world, including India and China -- both big players in the arms race.

- Ukraine's arms industry flagging -

Moscow has also provided arms to Syria since the Soviet era, though Damascus is now receiving very little, Wezeman said.

After an almost five-year conflict that has left 250,000 people dead and forced millions of others to flee, Syria no longer has the financial means to buy weapons from Russia.

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A Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II joint strike jet fighter at the company's factory in Fort W …

"The Russians basically say: you pay, then we deliver, otherwise we don't do it," Wezeman said.

Russian arms sales don't appear to have suffered much from the international sanctions slapped on Moscow after its annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Weapons industry officials have said the sanctions have merely prompted Russia to seek out new markets and develop new technologies.

But because of its conflict with Russia, Ukraine's arms sale have plunged by 37.4 percent.

"The noticeable decline in sales for Ukrainian companies was largely due to disruption caused by the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the loss of the Russian market, and the fall in the value of the local currency," said Wezeman.

Ukraine state-owned company UkrOboronProm fell from 58th position in 2013 to 90th in 2014, with a drop in sales of 50.2 percent to $840 million. Motor Sich, the other Ukrainian company that was ranked in the 2013 top 100, has left the list altogether.

Emerging producers meanwhile continued to strengthen their presence.

Two Turkish arms-producing companies ranked in the top 100: ASELSAN, which increased its sales by 5.6 percent in 2014 but has moved down in the ranking from 66th to 73rd; and Turkish Aerospace Industry (TAI), which has entered the top 100 at 89, with a growth in arms sales of 15.1 percent.

"Turkey is seeking more self-sufficiency for its arms supplies and this, coupled with an aggressive export drive, has contributed to the rapid growth in revenue for ASELSAN and TAI," said Pieter Wezeman, another senior researcher at SIPRI.

South Korean companies also raised their profile in 2014, increasing their total sales by 10.5 percent compared to 2013.

The most recent South Korean entrant to the top 100 is Hyundai Rotem, a military vehicle manufacturer, which jumped from $430 million in 2013 to $770 million in 2014.

A total of 15 Asian companies, excluding Chinese manufacturers, entered the Sipri top 100 list.

The Swedish institute does not include China in its list due to a lack of reliable data.