A retrial of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak over his role in the deaths of protesters in 2011 is to open on May 11, judicial sources told AFP on Wednesday.

Egypt may struggle on for the rest of the year without an IMF loan, enduring a summer of fuel shortages and power cuts rather than risk an explosion of unrest by implementing subsidy cuts and tax increases before parliamentary elections.

An Egyptian court on Monday ordered the release of former president Hosni Mubarak over the deaths of protesters but he will remain in custody pending investigation into fraud charges, state media reported.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a one-eyed Islamist militant leader who Chad claimed was killed in Mali last month, died by setting off explosives in despair over the death of another militant, Chad's President Idriss Deby said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

The leader of Egypt's dwindling and aging Jewish community, known for her tireless work preserving synagogues and a once-sprawling Jewish cemetery, died Saturday at the age of 82.

Michel Djotodia, whose rebel coalition Seleka seized power in the Central African Republic last month, was on Saturday elected interim president by the national transitional council.

Nine al-Shabab Islamic extremists, most wearing suicide vests, stormed Somalia's main court complex on Sunday while the Supreme Court was in session, firing a barrage of bullets during a running gun battle with security forces that lasted two hours, officials said.

Sudan's oil ministry said Sunday that the first crude from South Sudan reached its territory, bringing both impoverished nations closer to billions of dollars in revenue after a dispute over fees.

An upbeat and alert-looking Hosni Mubarak waved to his supporters after he was wheeled into a Cairo courtroom on Saturday for the first session of his retrial on charges of complicity in the killing of demonstrators during the 2011 revolt that led to his ouster.

South Africa's health minister on Monday launched a new single dose anti-AIDs drug which will simplify the world's biggest HIV treatment regime to just one life-saving pill a day.