West Africa

The 17-year-old girl had been brought to Sydney in early April by a man who offered her work as a cleaner, New South Wales Police said.

She was allegedly taken to a house and sexually assaulted by "a number of men" until her escape on 27 April.

Police officers from human trafficking and sex crime squads are investigating.

The teenager told police she fled the unknown location before being picked up by a woman who drove her to a community centre.

She was taken to hospital for medical treatment.

A statement by its regional force said air and ground forces were involved. It did not identify the militant group.

A French soldier was killed in the area earlier this month.

Mali suffers frequent attacks by Islamist militants despite a French military operation in 2013 to drive jihadists from northern cities.

A French military spokesman said the militants had been targeted in the Foulsare forest, in the south-west of Gao province.

Dr. Margaret Chan told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that there have been no new cases in Liberia, and only three new cases in Sierra Leone and Guinea, in each of the last two weeks, the lowest numbers in well over a year.

She says fears that the Ebola virus could be permanently established in humans in the region have also been defeated, which is "very good news."

But Chan also cautions against "a false sense of security."

There is currently no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola, which has so far killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa since the world's biggest outbreak began in the forest region of Guinea last year.

"If proven effective, this is going to be a game-changer," said Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, which sponsored the study. "It will change the management of the current outbreak and future outbreaks."

The election in Guinea in October adds a new layer of worry for Guineans and health workers, with some residents saying that campaign events, in which people crowd together, shouldn't be held yet.

The deadly virus, which has killed over 11,100 people mostly in West Africa in its worst outbreak ever, has been stamped out in neighboring Liberia, but is hanging on stubbornly in Guinea, where the Ebola outbreak was first reported in March 2014. Impending presidential elections could make it even worse.