Tag Archives: Africa

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 …

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 …

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 …

Around 80 people are feared missing in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after armed rebels ambushed a convoy on Wednesday and set fire to 16 vehicles, a local parliamentarian said. Jean-Paul Ngahangondi, a member of the Ituri province’s parliament, blamed the assault on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an …

Heavy flooding has affected about 380,000 people in South Sudan, with overflowing rivers submerging homes and displacing families in the impoverished country, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said Tuesday. Nearly three-quarters of those affected are in two states — Unity and Jonglei — OCHA said in a briefing note, warning …

Internet services in South Sudan were disrupted on Monday and security forces patrolled the streets after activists called for protests against President Salva Kiir’s government. The capital Juba was quieter than usual as residents sheltered inside. Internet access was restored on Monday evening, residents said, although service was slow. A …

Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 19 people in a raid on a village in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local authorities said. The attackers looted houses and started fires in Kasanzi-Kithovo near Virunga National Park in North Kivu province overnight between Friday and Saturday, they said. “I don’t …

Ninety children abducted from a school in Nigeria were reunited on Friday with their parents after being held captive for nearly three months, part of a wave of mass kidnappings by armed gangs that have spread fear across the north of the country. “Today is the happiest and most joyful …

Mali’s former prime minister Boubeye Maiga was arrested on Thursday for his role in the purchase of a presidential plane during the rule of ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, his lawyer said. The exact reason for the arrest was not clear, but it was related to Mali’s purchase of a …

Gunmen killed at least 150 people last week in western Ethiopia, the state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said on Thursday, in what it described as an attack by an armed group on civilians. The commission said that residents of the Gida Kiremu district in the Eastern Wollega zone told its …

A gunman killed three police officers and a private security guard on a rampage through a diplomatic quarter of Tanzania’s main city Dar es Salaam on Wednesday, before being shot dead while holed up in a guardhouse at the French embassy’s gate. Videos on the internet, apparently filmed by onlookers …

More than 20 people have been killed in two separate attacks in Nigeria’s troubled northwest. Local officials said nine people were killed when “unidentified persons” raided the village of Ungwan Dooh in Kaduna state’s Zangon Kataf district on Sunday. “Nine corpses have been recovered so far following a search of …

The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on an Eritrean official who is accused of being engaged in serious human rights abuse in the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, as Washington warned it would continue to target those involved in prolonging the conflict. The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement …

A suicide bomber attacked a checkpoint into the Libyan town of Zella on Sunday, killing himself but causing no other casualties, a spokesman for the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA), which controls that area, said. Libya has endured a decade of violence and chaos since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against …

Bandits have released 15 more students kidnapped last month from a Baptist school in northwest Nigeria, officials told Reuters on Sunday. School administrator Reverend John Hayab said that parents had raised and paid an undisclosed ransom to free the students, who were among more than 100 taken on July 5 …

About 1 billion children – nearly half the world’s 2.2 billion children – live in 33 countries classified as “extremely high-risk” of the impacts of climate change, according to a report of the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) launched on Friday. These children face a deadly combination of exposure to multiple …

Gunmen have kidnapped at least 60 people in a fresh attack on a community in Zamfara State, an official has said. The Zamfara State Commissioner of Information, Ibrahim Dosara, told TVC News that the gunmen stormed the Rini community. He said that after the attack, 60 residents of the community …