A group of armed French nationals intercepted along the Tunisia-Libya border last week are members of France‘s intelligence services, according to an unnamed source in Tunisia’s presidency who was quoted by Radio France International (RFI).

Tunisia’s government denied the story, which came amid reports suggesting French citizens may have assisted renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar as his forces attempt to capture the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Tunisian authorities said they stopped more than 20 Europeans carrying weapons last week, including 13 French citizens, attempting to cross into the country from neighbouring Libya.

The French citizens tried to enter Tunisia along the Ras Jedir crossing “under diplomatic cover with arms and ammunition”, a defence ministry statement said.

Al Jazeera has obtained passport copies of the French team arrested in Tunisia.

The French embassy in Tunis said at the time the individuals were members of a security detail attached to the French diplomatic mission in Libya, and the movement was part of a routine transfer of staff between Tripoli and Tunisia.

In a separate incident, Tunisia’s defence ministry said 11 people of different European nationalities had recently tried to enter Tunisian waters from Libya in two rubber dinghies.

Quoting a “well-placed source” at Tunisia’s presidential palace, Radio France International reported the men were not diplomats as claimed but instead intelligence agents.

“These actions undermine our sovereignty. There is a lot of back and forth to Libya,” the source was quoted as saying.

On Tuesday, Tunisia’s presidency issued a statement refuting the RFI report.

“The Tunisian presidency categorically denies the statements reported by RFI and attributed to a well-placed source at the presidential palace of Carthage concerning the passage of French diplomats through the border post of Ras Jedir.

“Such remarks are likely to undermine Tunisia’s national security and good relations between Tunisia and France,” it said.

‘Aiding Haftar’?

Reporting from Tunisia, Al Jazeera’s Lutfi Hajji quoted sources as saying border guards discovered communication devices with the group that may be linked to Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).

The French radio station also reported that 15 French intelligence officers had arrived in the city of Gharyan, 100km southwest of the Libyan capital, in mid-February to aid Haftar in his preparation for the attack on Tripoli, according to a Libyan source close to the government.

The source said the move prompted the Libyan government to end all cooperation with France.

While France has rejected the accusations, Libya’s internationally recognised interior ministry announced last week that it had suspended “all relations between the ministry and the French side … due to the position of the French government in support of the criminal Haftar”.

Libya, which has been mired in chaos since the NATO-backed toppling of Gaddafi in 2011, has been split into rival eastern and western administrations since 2014.

Haftar launched the ambitious military campaign in early April to capture Tripoli, where Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) is based.

Analysts say Haftar’s push on the capital threatens to further destabilise the oil-rich country and reignite a full-blown civil war.

While France officially supports the Tripoli-based government, it has also provided Haftar with financial, military and intelligence support in recent years.

‘Very unclear’

Mustafa Fetouri, a Libyan academic based in Paris, cast doubt on the official French explanation for the border incident.

“This particular incident is very unclear. The French claim that it is the guard of the embassy in Tripoli, but the building itself is closed – there are no operations there. The French government only recently allowed its employees, including the aid services, to go back to Libya,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It doesn’t make sense to say they are the guards of the embassy. It also doesn’t make sense to say they are actively involved with these operations helping Mr Haftar on the other side, because it would have been much safer for him just to take them to eastern Libya and they could fly out of the country from there.”

Libyan journalist Abdullah al-Kabir suggested the group of armed French nationals belong to a French military team that supports Haftar, adding if they were diplomatic staff they would have attempted to leave Tripoli through official means.

The White House on Tuesday ordered administration officials to boycott the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an annual fundraising gala attended by the White House press corps and scheduled for this Saturday.

The message was conveyed to agency chiefs of staff on Tuesday morning by White House Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley, who indicated that the order was coming from the president himself. Trump has already announced he will be holding a political rally in Green Bay, Wisc., Saturday night, calling the dinner “so boring and so negative.”

House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings is moving toward a vote to hold the former White House personnel security director in contempt after he refused to answer the committee’s questions Tuesday.

Cumming’s statement came after the White House instructed its former personnel security director to not answer questions by the House Oversight Committee Tuesday following allegations that the administration approved security clearances to those who should not have received them.

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“It appears that the president believes that the Constitution does not apply to his White House, that he may order officials at will to violate their legal obligations, and that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight,’ Cummings (D-Md.) said. “It also appears that the White House believes that it may dictate to Congress — an independent and co-equal branch of government — the scope of its investigations and even the rules by which it conducts them. To date, the White House has refused to produce a single piece of paper or a single witness in any of the Committee’s investigations this entire year.”

It’s the latest in a series of aggressive responses from the Trump administration to House Democrats pressing multiple investigative threads, including a lawsuit the White House filed on Monday against a House committee chairman to protect Trump’s financial records.

White House deputy counsel Michael Purpura sent a letter Monday asking the former security director, Carl Kline, not to answer questions because it “unconstitutionally encroaches on fundamental executive branch interests.”

Kline’s attorney, Robert Driscoll, wrote a subsequent letter to the committee that Kline would not answer questions. “With two masters from two equal branches of government, we will follow the instructions of the one that employs him,” Driscoll wrote in the letter to the committee.

The decision came after White House employee Tricia Newbold, a whistleblower told the committee that senior officials ignored national security concerns to approve security clearances for 25 individuals whose applications were initially denied. Newbold described a “systematic” pattern of abuses on the part of Kline.

The White House and Driscoll did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Monday the White House sued Cummings in response to a subpoena the committee issued to an accounting firm that has worked for Trump’s business, the Trump Organization.

“The Democrat Party, with its newfound control of the U.S. House of Representatives, has declared all-out political war against President Donald J. Trump,” Trump’s lawyers declared in a court filing. “Subpoenas are their weapon of choice.”

Khartoum, Sudan – It was the image that came to symbolise Sudan’s uprising against former longtime President Omar al-Bashir.

The picture of engineering and architecture student, Alaa Salah, 22, clad in white and standing on top of a car earlier this month leading demonstrators in protest chants against al-Bashir’s near-three-decade reign in office.

But for months Sudanese women have been at the forefront of protests and sit-ins against al-Bashir.

It is just after the evening prayers on a busy corner at a square near the army headquarters in the capital, Khartoum and a long queue of protesters – men, women, young and old – has formed in front of a tent where food is cooking in giant pots on open fires.

A group of female volunteers is working to prepare meals for the protesters.

Since April 6, the day when the sit-in started outside the army headquarters, the team says it has served meals to at least two thousands demonstrators a day.

Awadia Mahmoud Koko, a grandmother of 13, is in charge of the female volunteers.

“I have been waiting for this moment my whole life,” the 56-year-old told Al Jazeera, while taking a break.

“I came here April 6 to protest but when I saw young and old people with no food, tea or water I decided to do something about it,” she added.

She called a union that represents restaurants and tea sellers in the city of two million people to see if they could donate food. They gave her uncooked food. That did not stop Koko, who called her friends to join her and prepare the food.

‘We want a new Sudan’

The night the sit-in began, they served their first meal and have not look back since.

“It is the least I can do for my people who have came out to protest and demand their rights. We have suffered a lot. We want a new Sudan and everyone has to take part in creating that new Sudan,” she added as she rushed back to help the other volunteers.

Demonstrations first started in December after the government slashed wheat and fuel subsidies, causing prices to skyrocket.

Security forces cracked down on the demonstrators, killing dozens and arresting hundreds more.

That didn’t deter the protesters, who then starting calling for al-Bashir and his government to resign.

On April 6 thousands marched to the army headquarters and said they would not leave until the president resigned. The army stepped in on April 11 and overthrew al-Bashir, naming a transitional military council to run the country for two years, much to the displeasure of the protesters at the sit-in.

They have vowed not to leave until a civilian authority is installed.

Protesters demand democracy

At a stall about five minutes walk from Koko’s tent, Halima Ishaq is giving an impassioned speech to a group of young protesters, as patriotic music blares from portable speakers nearby.

“Do you want freedom?” She asks the crowd of about 40. They screamed back a unanimous “yes”. She then tells them to bring everyone they know to the sit-in until democracy is installed in the country.

Ishaq is a teacher and an activist from the country’s troubled Darfur region – an area in western Sudan that has witnessed years of deadly violence.

“I’m from a village called Kilin in the Mara mountains. It was burned down by militia and I was forced to live in an IDP camp,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I blame al-Bashir for it. I blame his government. Us women suffered twice as much as the men. The violence and injustice affected us directly. And if it did not affect us directly it was affecting our children.” Ishaq, 34, added.

Al-Bashir is being sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The charges against the 75-year-old stem from the conflict in Darfur, where fighting broke out in 2003.

Al-Bashir’s government is accused of mobilising Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, who are accused of burning villages to the ground, massacring civilians and carrying out mass rapes.

The conflict killed an estimated 300,000 people and displaced some 2.7 million.

‘Women’s participation is essential’

According to the World Bank, 50 percent of the northeast African country’s 40 million population are women.

Female activists are now demanding an equal share of seats in any civilian transitional authority and future parliament.

“We need a fair and just country. We have suffered a lot. More than men in many cases. Women should be in the centre of any government,” Marsiliya Yakub, an activist from the country’s Nuba Mountains region, told Al Jazeera.

When not at the sit-in encouraging protesters not to give up, Yakub coordinates with activists across the country to facilitate travel for women who want to come to the city and take part in the demonstration.

“We are here protesting for our rights and the rights of everyone else that has been oppressed under the old regime,” she added.

Their calls have been heard. One of the demands of the Sudanese Professional Association, the group spearheading the mass protests, is to have 40 percent women in any civilian transitional authority formed to replace the military transitional council.

Analysts say the 40 percent quota should be increased.

“Women’s participation in the transitional government is very essential. They have played a vital role in the revolution. They should have more than 40 percent representation. That is only fair,” Salah Aldoma, a political science professor at Islamic University of Omdurman, told Al Jazeera.

Koko and the other women at the sit-in say the are going nowhere until they see a new Sudan.

“Until victory is achieved we will be here giving food and support to everyone. It is every Sudanese duty to take part in the revolution,” Koko said.

Follow Hamza Mohamed on Twitter: @Hamza_Africa