U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry left late Tuesday on his first major tour of Africa focused on some of the continent's most brutal wars including the bloodshed in South Sudan. 

The trip, which will take in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, will seek to "encourage democratic development, promote respect for human rights, advance peace and security," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki has said.

Military spending between 2014 and 2020 in the Middle East and North Africa will total $920 billion (662 billion euros), IHS Global Insight said in a forecast Tuesday. 

The U.S.-based consulting firm did not give an overall breakdown at the end of a forum it hosted in Dubai, but said $27 billion will have been injected into the economies of the Arab nations of the Gulf by 2020 from defense deals via offsets.

Two civilians were killed when gunmen ambushed a convoy of Muslims fleeing violence in the capital of the strife-torn Central African Republic, international peacekeepers said on Tuesday.

The convoy, bearing some 1,300 Muslims who feared killer raids by mainly Christian vigilantes, left Bangui on Sunday with a strong escort of troops from the African Union's MISCA peacekeeping mission.

Vehicles without wheels are a common sight across the strife-torn Central African Republic, where drivers have long since resorted to extreme but risky measures to protect their precious property.

At first sight, one might assume that car owners are afraid of having their tyres pinched, but for more than 16 months, people have removed wheels and propped their vehicles on stones mainly to prevent armed groups from making off with them.

At least 22 people including three staff members of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres were killed during a weekend attack by gunmen on a Central African hospital, in the latest atrocity to hit the violence-plagued country.

The brutal attack in the northwest was blamed on rebels known as the Seleka, a mostly Muslim group whose coup in March last year unleashed a vicious cycle of sectarian violence.

Some 1,300 Muslims fearing attack by mainly Christian militias left the Central African capital Bangui on Sunday under heavy guard, deepening the religious divide in the strife-torn country.

Piled along with their possessions aboard 18 articulated lorries, the refugees left around midday accompanied by a large contingent of African peacekeepers, headed for the relative safety of the north.

There are only 18 of them but the gendarmes in Bria, once the capital of the Seleka rebels, have become a living symbol of the Central African Republic state's efforts to rebuild.

The small paramilitary police unit has in recent days begun to patrol the streets of this key mining town of 75,000 people, northeast of Bangui.

The international community must do more to protect threatened religious minorities in the conflict-ravaged Central African Republic, U.N. experts said Friday, insisting evacuation should only be a last resort.

"The dilemma to either stay and risk one's life or be evacuated is enormous for religious minorities in the Central African Republic," the U.N. human rights experts warned in a statement.

President Francois Hollande will visit Georgia shortly, his foreign minister announced Thursday as France seeks to boost ties with the small ex-Soviet country that stands in the shadow of its giant neighbor Russia.

The French leader's visit -- due in May -- comes at a time when the European Union is seeking to boost ties with countries lying to its east, and as the West and Russia exchange increasingly strident barbs over the crisis in Ukraine where Moscow has already annexed the Crimean peninsula.

The United Nations has evacuated almost 100 Muslims from the capital of the crisis-torn Central African Republic to "save their lives", according to officials.

Supported by staff from the U.N.'s refugee agency, 93 Muslims were transported east from Bangui to the town of Bambari, according to El Hadj Abacar ben Ousmane, senior official in the town some 300 kilometers (185 miles) from the capital.