Africa

Nigerian officials cut communication lines in multiple parts of Katsina state as a crackdown on banditry in the northwest of the country spreads. Katsina state security adviser Ibrahim Ahmed told Reuters by phone that the government directed a communications blackout in 13 local government areas to hinder criminality in the …

Ethiopia said on Thursday that rebellious forces from the Tigray region had been defeated in the adjacent Afar region and had withdrawn, but the Tigrayan forces said they had merely shifted troops to neighboring Amhara for an offensive there. “The TPLF force has left Afar (region),” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Dina …

Morocco’s liberal RNI party has won most seats in the country’s parliamentary elections followed by another liberal party, PAM, while co-ruling moderate PJD Islamists suffered a crushing defeat, preliminary results showed on Thursday. RNI, led by billionaire agriculture minister Aziz Akhannouch, took 97 of the 395-seat parliament, followed by PAM …

At least 125 villagers were massacred in Ethiopia’s Amhara region earlier this month, doctors and local officials told AFP Wednesday, but rebels from neighbouring Tigray rejected claims they were responsible. It was the latest reported mass killing in the 10-month conflict in northern Ethiopia between government forces and Tigray rebels …

Algeria has detained 30 people, including seven members of a separatist group that the government has declared a terrorist organisation, for involvement in wildfires that killed at least 65 people, the paramilitary police said on Wednesday. They have been placed in custody after appearing before a court following investigations over …

Libyan interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibeh said on Wednesday he would visit Tunisia Thursday and meet President Kais Saied after weeks of friction between the North African neighbors over security. Neither the Tunisian foreign ministry nor presidency were immediately available to confirm Dbeibeh’s visit. The two countries have been in …

Guinea’s main opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo, a long-standing rival of deposed President Alpha Conde, said on Tuesday that he and his party were open to participating in a political transition following Sunday’s military coup. Diallo, 69, who was defeated by Conde in an October presidential election in which the …

Militants have hacked to death at least 30 people in a new massacre in the restive northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Locals and sources from the United Nations (UN) said on Monday that the militants armed with machetes, sticks and clubs had raided an area of Ituri …

The leaders of a military coup in Guinea promised on Monday to set up a transitional government of national unity after ousting President Alpha Conde and dissolving his cabinet. Sunday’s coup, in which Conde and other top politicians were detained or barred from traveling, is the third since April in …

A young man wounded in Tunisia’s 2011 revolution has burned himself alive after the government failed to provide any compensation, his family told AFP on Monday. The self-immolation by 26-year-old Neji Hefiane recalls the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, the street seller whose suicide by fire on December 17, 2010 launched …

Ethiopian Airlines said on Monday its transport of weapons to Sudan was a “legal and commercial” shipment of hunting guns, after reports the cargo had been confiscated by the authorities in Khartoum. Sudan’s SUNA news agency had said on Sunday that the weapons were seized by customs and an investigation …

Tanzania suspended on Sunday another newspaper accused of false stories even though President Samia Suluhu Hassan had pledged to uphold media freedoms quashed by her predecessor. Raia Mwema, a leading Swahili-language weekly, was suspended for 30 days from Monday, for “repeatedly publishing false information and deliberate incitement,” Gerson Msigwa, the …

The parole is effective Sunday and he will serve out the rest of the 15-month jail sentence outside the jail. South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma, jailed in July for contempt of court after snubbing graft investigators, was on Sunday granted medical parole, prison authorities announced. Zuma has been hospitalised …

Turmoil engulfed the impoverished west African nation of Guinea again on Sunday as army putschists said they had captured the president and staged a coup, and the government insisted it has repelled the attack. “We have decided, after having taken the president, to dissolve the constitution,” said a uniformed officer …

Ethiopia said on Saturday that more than 150 aid trucks had entered war-torn Tigray over the past two days after the United Nations warned of a “looming catastrophe” in the northern region. A senior UN official said this week that a “de facto aid blockade” was exacerbating the humanitarian crisis …

Fighting broke out in Tripoli early on Friday between rival armed forces, witnesses said, the heaviest clashes in the Libyan capital since the conflict between eastern and western factions paused a year ago. A resident of the Salah al-Din district in southern Tripoli said shooting began at about 2.30 a.m. …

Eight people suffocated to death when police in Burkina Faso used tear gas against unauthorised gold miners at Nordgold’s Bissa mine, a prosecutor said on Thursday. About 40 were on site on Wednesday when the police fired tear gas, which “caused panic and the suffocation of the clandestine gold miners”, …

Twelve people died and 4,400 fell sick in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo following a tailings leak from the Catoca diamond mine in Angola in July, Congo’s environment minister said on Thursday. Following a visit to Kasai province, where the Tshikapa river turned red and many fish died, environment …

An arrangement whereby Johnson & Johnson was shipping COVID-19 vaccine doses to Europe that had been packaged in South Africa has been suspended, African Union (AU) envoy Strive Masiyiwa said on Thursday. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last month he was “stunned” by the arrangement, since Europe has very …

Armed men kidnapped 73 children from a school in the northwestern Nigerian state of Zamfara in the latest mass abduction in the region, police said in a statement on Wednesday. Police said a large number of armed bandits invaded the Government Day Secondary School in the village of Kaya in …