Nigeria plans to withdraw some of its troops from Mali because they are needed back home, where the country is battling a deadly Islamist insurgency, officials said Thursday.

It was not clear how many troops would be pulled from the troubled west African nation, where Nigeria currently has some 1,000 troops, a Nigerian military source said.

Shoppers ready to spend lavishly on clothes by elite designers sipped champagne in a discreetly located store that only those in-the-know know exists.

Perhaps it's not an unusual scene in Manhattan or Milan, but in Lagos, sub-Saharan Africa's largest city, shops like Temple Muse are a novelty. A growing number of boutique owners and fashion designers however are working to change that.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has left Nigeria after demands for his arrest on war crimes charges, an embassy spokesman said Tuesday, although he denied the departure was due to the controversy.

"He has left. He left in the afternoon (on Monday)," Mohammed Moiz, spokesman for the Sudanese embassy in Nigeria, told Agence France Presse. He denied Bashir had left due to calls for his arrest, saying he had another engagement.

Nigeria's presidency on Monday defended welcoming Sudan President Omar al-Bashir to the country for an African Union health summit despite war crimes charges against him, saying it cannot interfere in AU affairs.

Bashir arrived in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Sunday for the summit on HIV/AIDS, turberculosis and malaria despite being wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Nigeria's military on Sunday claimed the rescue of women and children hostages from a Boko Haram Islamist stronghold, saying troops killed several insurgents during recent gun battles in the area.

The Bulabulin Nganaram area of the northeastern city of Maiduguri, where the fighting occurred, is considered an enclave of the radical Islamist group.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir landed in Nigeria's capital on Sunday to attend a continental health summit as rights groups slammed the "shameful" decision to host a leader charged with war crimes.

Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, landed in Abuja at 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) ahead of an African Union Summit on infectious diseases.

Human Rights Watch on Saturday urged Nigeria to bar Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir from attending a health summit next week and demanded the war crimes-indicted leader be arrested if he visits.

Nigeria is a member of the International Criminal Court, which has charged Bashir with war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity over the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region.

The head of Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamists said he supported a July 6 attack on a school that killed 42 people, but did not claim responsibility for the massacre, in a video obtained by Agence France Presse Saturday.

"We fully support the attack on this Western education school in Mamudo," in northern Yobe state, Abubakar Shekau said in the 10-minute video message.

A Nigerian court on Friday denied bail to three Lebanese charged with "terrorism" over their alleged links to Hizbullah.

Mustapha Fawaz, 49, Abdallah Thahini, 48, and Talal Ahmad Roda, 51, were charged last month after a massive supply of weapons was found at a business in the capital Abuja and a private home in the northern city of Kano.

A Nigerian minister tasked with talking to Boko Haram claimed Wednesday that he was in ceasefire negotiations with the Islamist insurgents, but doubts persisted that a peace pact could be secured.

There have been previous claims of peace talks between the government and the militants, but the negotiations, if they did indeed occur, failed to quell the violence.