The Mauritanian government has ordered the closure of several Islamic charities for "overstepping their mandate", a security official said on Friday, including an organization with links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

No official explanation has been given for the crackdown but ministers made the decision after holding a cabinet meeting on Thursday to discuss security issues and "the consequences of past excesses on the stability of the country", the official told Agence France Presse.

About one in five people face food insecurity in the west African desert country of Mauritania because of poor harvests and high prices, the World Food Program said Monday.

More than 650,000 people in the country of 3.5 million live in conditions similar to those of December 2008 at the height of the world food crisis, the U.N. agency said, releasing the results of a study.

A student was killed in protests in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott in the early hours of Monday, a hospital source said, as hundreds took to the streets to protest against an alleged desecration of the Koran.

The man, a literature student at the University of Nouakchott, according to the source, died as police struggled to contain demonstrators demanding the arrest of a group they accused of seizing copies of the text from a mosque.

The United Nations envoy on modern-day slavery said on Thursday Mauritania had agreed to adopt a roadmap for eradicating the trade, which campaigners say remains widespread in the west African nation.

The country was the last in the world to abolish slavery, in 1981, and since 2012 its practice has been officially designated a crime, but campaigners say the government has failed in the past to acknowledge the extent of the trade, with no official data available.

Mauritania's prime minister and his cabinet resigned Sunday, a move that had been expected after the ruling party scored a sweeping victory in legislative and local elections last year.

"Prime Minister Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf has submitted his government's resignation to President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz," said state-run news agency AMI.

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz took over as African Union chairman on Thursday, replacing Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in the one-year post.

Aziz, in his opening speech, congratulated Hailemairan "for the remarkable work accomplished during his tenure," adding that "he has contributed brilliantly to strengthen the role of Africa on both continental and international levels".

The leaders of Mali and Mauritania on Sunday signed an accord to boost military cooperation and information sharing in the battle against "armed groups or terrorists" plaguing the west African neighbors.

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, elected in August 2013 after months of turbulence in which Islamists seized the northern half of his country, signed the deal on a state visit to Nouakchott.

Mauritania is to set up a special tribunal to prosecute suspects accused of involvement in slavery, state media said on Tuesday, in a bid to eradicate the trade in the west African state.

A judicial committee chaired by President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz met on Monday and "decided to create a court to try crimes of slavery," the Mauritanian Information Agency reported.

Mauritania's ruling UPR party has won a ruling majority in parliament after a second round of legislative elections, according to results given Sunday.

The Union for the Republic party had gone into Saturday's election with already a victory in the November 23 first round after a boycott by several opposition parties in the mainly Muslim republic, a former French colony on the west coast of the Sahara desert.

Mauritania's main Islamist party said on Monday the country's parliamentary and local elections had been marred by "ballot stuffing" and other forms of fraud.

Tewassoul president Jemil Ould Mansour told a news conference the party had found "serious irregularities" which could discredit Saturday's polls, including "ballot stuffing in some places and the resumption of the vote after the count in others".