Tag Archives: Africa

Moroccan police thwarted an attempt by several hundred migrants to force their way into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the northern African coast, officials said Thursday. The large group of men gathered on the Moroccan side of the border after nightfall Wednesday and threw stones at police who moved …

Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee,” the award-giving body said on Thursday. Based in Britain and writing in English, Gurnah, 72, joins Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka as the only …

The United Nations says Mozambique has rescued a number of children who had been abducted by the al-Shabab terrorist group to be forcefully recruited as child soldiers. Last week, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said al-Shabab had kidnapped hundreds of boys in the northeast of Mozambique and forced them to …

At least three international advocacy organizations have called on the African Union (AU) to withdraw the Israeli regime’s observer status over its human rights violations and crimes against humanity. The US-based Democracy for Arab World Now (DAWN) together with the Legal Resource Center (LRC) in South Africa on Monday signed …

Ethiopia’s parliament confirmed incumbent Abiy Ahmed as prime minister for a five-year term on Monday, cementing his power domestically amid mounting international concern about his government’s handling of the conflict in northern Ethiopia. Abiy’s party won a landslide victory in June’s election. He was sworn in on Monday, and a …

A cargo plane delivered four helicopters, weapons, and ammunition from Russia to Mali late on Thursday, Malian interim defense minister Sadio Camara said. He said Mali had bought the helicopters in a contract agreed in December 2020 to support its armed forces in their battle alongside French, European and UN …

A car bomb exploded at a checkpoint near Somalia’s presidential palace Saturday, killing eight people, police said, as the Al-Shabaab terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack. “We have confirmed that eight people most of them civilians died and seven others wounded in the car bomb blast”, district police chief …

The Libyan National Army (LNA) of eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar clashed with Chadian rebel forces in the south of Libya on Tuesday and Wednesday, both sides said. The fighting underscores the risk of further instability in the Sahel region, where an array of groups operate across borders and where fighting …

A total of 114 of the 266 inmates who escaped from a Nigerian prison on Sunday have been recaptured, the prison service said on Tuesday. Heavily armed gunmen raided the medium-security jail at Kabba in south-central Nigeria late on Sunday, blowing up the perimeter fence and freeing almost everyone, but …

The World Health Organization (WHO) has denounced the “shocking inequity” in the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, urging the Western governments to put a halt to booster doses until at least the end of the year. In an address to the 71st session of the Regional Committee for Europe, WHO …

Nearly 70 students who were abducted from their school in northern Nigeria have regained their freedom after two weeks in captivity, Zamfara state Gov. Bello Matawalle said Monday. The students from the Government Day Secondary School were rescued with the help of some of the gunmen who had repented, he …

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 …

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 …

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 …